A  HISTORY  OF 


FRENCH  LITERATURE 


BY 


CHARLES  WOODWARD  HUTSON 

Professor  of  Modern  Languages  in  the   University  of  Mississippi, 

Author  of  The  Beginnings  of  Civilization,   Out  of  a 

Besieged  City,  etc. 


NEW  YORK: 

WM.    L.    ALLISON    COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS. 


Copyright,  1889, 

BY 
CHAKLES  WOODWABD  HUTSON. 


POLITICAL  CHRONOLOGY  OF  FRANCE. 


HOUSE   OF   CAPET. 

Hugh  the  Great, 987-  996 

Robert  the  Sage, 996-1031 

Henry  I., 1031-1060 

Philip  I.,       .     _ 1060-1108 

Louis  VI.,     .    /  .    .    . 1108-1137 

Louis  VIL, 1137-1180 

Philip  Augustus, 1180-1223 

Louis  VIIL, .  1223-1226 

Louis  IX.  (St.  Louis), 1226-1270 

Philip  III., 1270-1285 

Philip  IV.  (The  Fair), 1285-1314 

Louis  X., 1314-1316 

Philip  V 1316-1322 

Charles  IV., 1322-1328 

HOUSE   OF   VALOIS. 

Philip  VI 1328-1350 

John  the  Good,      ........  1350-1364 

Charles  V., 1364-1380 

Charles  VI., 1380-1422 

Charles  VIL, 1422-1461 

Louis  XT 1461-1483 

Charles  VIII., 1483-1498 

3 


FRENCH  LITERATURE. 


i. 

GENERAL    SKETCH:— TO  THE  REVOLUTION  OF  1789. 

THE  French  language  is  one  of  those  languages 
of  the  great  Aryan  family  which  grew  up  in  South- 
ern Europe  from  the  old  Latin  stock.  It  did  not 
spring  from  the  Latir  of  literature,  but  from  that 
Lingua  Romano,  rusvet  spoken  in  the  later  days 
of  the  Roman  Empii3,  with  various  dialectic  pecu- 
liarities, over  all  th?  outlying  provinces.  In  Gaul 
this  tongue  of  the  p  >]  iulace  had  already  been  mod- 
ified by  the  Keltic  >j>eech  which  it  displaced,  as  in 
Spain  by  the  Kel  i^erian.  In  the  closing  period 
of  Roman  history  „  had  been  further  modified  by 
the  Teutonic  dialects  brought  in  by  the  Western 
Goths,  the  Burgundians,  and  the  Franks.  The  in- 
fluence of  the  Goths,  however,  was  slight  and  tran- 
sient, as  they  ultimately  established  their  power  on 
the  southern  side  of  the  Pyrenees.  The  influence 
of  the  Burgundians  was  confined  to  the  regions 
about  the  Rhine. 

The  Franks  mastered  the  country  at  just  that 
critical  period  which  enabled  their  ruler  to  combine 
the  waning  civilization  of  the  Empire  and  the 
moral  vigor  of  the  young  Christian  Church  with 
the  energy  of  a  fresh  race,  and  so  to  continue  the 
traditions  and  the  prestige  of  the  old  Roman  Em- 
pire into  the  new  order  of  things.  Their  adher- 
ence, too,  to  the  Athannsian  creed  gave  them  an 
advantage  over  other  Teutonic  races,  who  had 
embraced  the  Arian  doctrines,  in  enabling  them 

5 


6  To   the  Revolution  of  1789. 

to  harmonize  better  with  the  old  Eoman  world 
into  which  they  had  penetrated. 

When  first  taking  their  place  in  history,  they 
were  divided  into  two  well-marked  groups — the 
Salian  Franks  and  the  Eipuarian  Franks.  The  Sa- 
lians,  at  the  close  of  the  fourth  century,  were  spread 
over  Holland  and  the  Low  Countries.  The  Ripu- 
arians  had  settled  on  both  sides  of  the  Rhine  as  I'ar 
up  as  the  Main.  Both  groups  were  at  that  time  of 
thoroughly  Teutonic  blood  and  speech,  except  that 
the  Belgian  part  of  the  race  may  have  had  some 
trace  of  Keltic  origin. 

By  the  time  of  Charles  the  Great,  crowned  Em- 
peror at  Rome  in  the  year  800,  the  dominion  of  the 
Franks  had  greatly  increased,  and  that  wise  and 
warlike  prince  so  extended  his  rule  as  to  embrace 
under  his  sway  all  the  West  of  Europe.  His 
realm  included  the  whole  of  ancient  Gaul,  the 
greater  part  of  Germany,  Spain  as  far  as  the  Ebro, 
and  that  part  of  Italy  still  known  as  Lombard}7. 
This  Kaiser  Karl,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  in 
blood  and  speech  a  Teutonic  prince,  though,  from 
his  having  in  later  ages  become  a  special  hero  of 
French  romance  under  the  name  of  Charlemagne, 
he  is  apt  to  be  regarded  by  ordinary  readers  of  his- 
tory as  the  founder  of  the  French  monarchy,  which 
is  far  from  being  the  true  conception  of  his  place 
in  history.  The  truth  is,  there  was  no  France  as 
yet,  and  the  country  of  the  Franks  stretched  across 
what  are  now  northern  France  and  central  Ger- 
many, taking  in  the  countries  now  known  as  Bel- 
gium and  Holland. 

At  the  close  of  one  of  his  wars  with  the  Saxons, 
Charles  transported  vast  numbers  of  them  into 
northern  Gaul,  and  settled  them  there.  The  Em- 
peror Julian,  ages  before,  had  done  the  same  thing 
with  the  Alternant  These  transplantations  greatly 
increased  the  Teutonic  element  in  the  race  which 
afterwards  came  to  be  known  as  the  French.  With 
grafts  from  such  various  Germanic  stocks  as  the 


To  the  Devolution  of  1789.  7 

Gothic,  Burgundian,  Frank,  Saxon,  and  Allemanic, 
together  with  the  Scandinavian  branch  of  the  Teu- 
tonic family  in  the  persons  of  the  Normans,  who 
forced  a  settlement  in  the  north  of  Gaul  in  the  time 
of  Charles  the  Simple,  it  is  no  wonder  that  we  find 
the  French  language  far  richer  in  Teutonic  words 
than  any  other  of  the  Romanic  tongues.  There  are 
in  them  all  about  nine  hundred  words  of  Teutonic 
origin;  about  three  hundred  are  common  to  them 
all ;  while  French  has  four  hundred  and  fifty  not 
found  in  the  others. 

The  French  monarchy  and  the  French  people 
really  have  their  historical  beginning  with  the 
crowning  at  Rheims  of  Hugues  Capet.  Count  of 
Paris,  as  King  of  the  French,  in  the  year  987. 
The  Franks  of  the  West  were  then  formally  sepa- 
rated from  the  Franks  of  the  East,  who  remained 
an  integral  part  of  the  German  Kingdom. 

During  the  previous  century,  however — that  is, 
from  the  deposition  of  Charles  the  Fat  in  887 — 
there  had  been  a  practical  severance  of  the  West 
Franks  from  the  East  Franks.  The  men  of  Latin 
Francia,  dwelling  between  the  Loire  and  the  Seine, 
and  struggling  for  life  and  land  with  the  Norman 
pirates  with  little  aid  from  their  nominal  lords  in 
the  German  land,  were  growing  steadily  into  a  sense 
of  their  separate  identity.  Before  the  close  of  that 
century  of  isolation  and  conflict,  they  were  speak- 
ing their  dialect  of  the  Romanic  speech,  and  were 
aware  that  it  was  something  different  from  Ger- 
man. 

South  of  the  Loire,  another,  though  kindred  Ro- 
manic tongue  was  spoken.  This  was  Proven9al. 
The  rulers  in  that  land  were  the  Dukes  of  Aqui- 
taine  and  Gascony  and  the  Counts  of  Toulouse  and 
Barcelona,  who  were  really  independent  princes, 
with  but  a  slight  bond  of  allegiance  to  the  neigh- 
boring kings.  Its  advanced  position  in  the  re- 
newed march  of  progress,  after  the  period  of  con- 
fusion which  the  fall  of  Roman  civilization  brought 


8  To   the  Revolution  of  1789. 

upon  Europe,  is  finely  described  in  these  words  of 
Macaulay  : 

"  That  country,  singularly  favored  by  nature,  was,  in 
the  twelfth  century,  the  most  flourishing  and  civilized 
part  of  Western  Europe.  It  was  in  nowise  a  part  of 
France.  It  had  a  distinct  political  existence,  a  distinct 
national  character,  distinct  usuages,  and  a  distinct  speech. 
The  soil  was  fruitful  and  well  cultivated ;  and  amidst  the 
cornfields  and  vineyards  arose  many  rich  cities,  each  of 
which  was  a  little  republic ;  and  many  stately  castles, 
each  of  which  contained  a  miniature  of  an  imperial 
court.  It  was  there  that  the  spirit  of  chivalry  first  laid 
aside  its  terrors,  first  took  a  humane  and  graceful  form, 
first  appeared  as  the  inseparable  associate  of  art  and  lit- 
erature, of  courtesy  and  love.  The  other  vernacular  dia- 
lects which,  since  the  fifth  century,  had  sprung  up  in  the 
ancient  provinces  of  the  Roman  Empire,  were  still  rude 
and  imperfect.  The  sweet  Tuscan,  the  rich  and  ener- 
getic English,  were  abandoned  to  artisans  and  shepherds. 
No  clerk  had  ever  condescended  to  use  such  barbarous 
jargon  for  the  teaching  of  science,  for  the  recording  of 
great  events,  or  for  the  painting  of  life  and  manners. 
But  the  language  of  Provence  was  already  the  language 
of  the  learned  and  polite,  and  was  employed  by  numer- 
ous writers,  studious  of  all  the  arts  of  composition  and 
versification.  A  literature  rich  in  ballads,  in  war-songs, 
in  satire,  and,  above  all,  in  amatory  poetry,  amused  the 
leisure  of  the  knights  and  ladies  whose  fortified  mansions 
adorned  the  banks  of  the  Rhone  and  Garonne." 

For  many  generations  this  land  of  culture  re- 
mained a  mark  for  the  ambition  of  the  kings  rul- 
ing at  Paris ;  and  it  was  only  by  slow  encroach- 
ments, by  a  long  series  of  conquests,  marriages, 
treaties,  and  crusades  against  so-called  heretics,  that 
they  gradually  extended  their  supremacy  over  the 
south.  Equally  slow  was  .the  growth  of  the 
French  language  to  the  mastery  of  all  the  lands  in 
which  it  ultimately  became  the  national  speech — 
Provence  and  Languedoc  in  the  south,  Bretague  in 
the  west. 


To  the  Devolution  of  1789.  9 

Of  the  two  forms  of  modified  Latin  which  sprang 
up  in  Gaul,  that  which  in  the  end  became  French 
was  long  in  imminent  danger  of  being  overweighted 
and  absorbed  by  its  rival.  The  immediate  parent 
of  French  was  the  Roman  Wallon  or  Langue  d1  Oil, 
spoken  in  the  north.  The  tongue  used  in  the 
south,  the  Provengal  or  Langue  (TOc,  in  itself  far 
softer  and  more  poetical,  was,  as  has  been  said,  long 
the  vehicle  of  art  and  culture.  It  was  the  instru- 
ment of  Troubadour  song,  the  natural  language  of 
the  new  spirit  of  chivalry. 

The  political  fortunes  of  the  kings  of  the  Cape- 
tian  line,  the  extension  of  the  northern  speech  into 
England  by  the  conquest  of  William  the  Norman, 
the  deadly  blow  dealt  to  the  development  of  the 
south  by  the  persecutions  of  the  Albigenses,  all 
tended  to  exalt  the  Langue  d1  Oil  and  to  crush  the 
vitality  of  the  Langue  (TOc. 

French  literature  proper  did  not  begin,  then, 
until  the  French  language  had  fairly  ousted  its 
powerful  rival  of  the  south,  though  there  were  imi- 
tators of  the  Troubadours  among  those  who  used 
the  northern  speech  before  the  Troubadours  had 
altogether  ceased  to  sing.  When  the  art  of  the 
Troubadours  began  to  decay,  the  university  of  Paris 
was  already  at  a  high  pitch  of  celebrity,  and  the 
establishment  of  the  Sorbonne  soon  added  to  its 
glory.  The  fame  of  these  institutions  attracted 
scholars  from  all  nations,  and  the  native  language 
began  to  assume  greater  elegance  under  the  light  of 
learning  thus  held  up  in  the  capital  of  the  French 
people. 

Throughout  the  twelfth  century  and  in  the  early 
part  of  the  thirteenth,  the  Trouveres  produced  a 
great  number  of  Lays,  some  on  real,  some  on  imag- 
inary subjects.  The  Fabliaux  and  some  of  the 
early  chronicles  also  belong  to  this  period.  In  the 
thirteenth  century  was  begun  by  Guillaume  de 
Lorris,  and  finished  in  the  fourteenth  by  Jean  de 
Meung,  that  Roman  >le  la  AVv.  which  Chaucer  trans- 


10  French  Literature. 

lated  into  English  among  his  first  essays  in  the 
poetic  art.  It  was  a  great  favorite  in  France,  and 
long  exerted  an  influence  upon  the  taste  and  art  of 
many  writers. 

In  that  great  age,  the  fourteenth  century,  when 
Italy  was  blossoming  into  so  rich  a  glory  of  art  and 
letters,  and  England  was  producing  her  Chaucer, 
Froissart  began  French  prose  in  those  luminous 
chronicles  in  which  he  described  the  great  wars  of 
Edward  with  France,  wars  which  he  partly  wit- 
nessed, and  in  which  he  may  be  almost  said  to  have 
shared.  Froissart  was  on  the  English  side,  rather 
than  the  French,  in  these  wars ;  but  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  he  was  a  subject  of  Philippa  of 
Hainault,  Edward's  queen,  and  that  French  was  the 
court  language  in  England  still,  and  the  Plantagenet 
princes  were  not  yet  English,  whatever  their  island 
people  may  have  been.  Prose  chronicles,  it  should 
be  said,  had  been  written  by  De  Joinville  under  the 
last  of  the  Crusading  Kings,  as  well  as  by  Ville- 
hardoin  under  the  first  Latin  Emperor  of  Constan- 
tinople. But,  admirable  as  these  works  are  from 
some  points  of  view,  they  are  like  the  lispings  of 
childhood  when  compared  with  the  lifelike  and 
many-colored  narrative  of  Froissart ;  so  that  French 
prose  may  be  truly  said  to  begin  with  him,  as  En- 
glish poetry  begins  with  Chaucer. 

Next  to  Froissart  comes  the  historian,  Philippe 
de  Comines,  who  wrote  in  the  fifteenth  century  and 
opens  the  way  to  the  study  of  the  philosophy  of 
history.  With  Francis  I.  and  his  brilliant  sister, 
Marguerite  of  Navarre,  French  literature  took  a 
powerful  impulse  forward.  Francis  himself,  with 
all  his  faults,  was  fond  of  art  and  of  books.  The 
revival  of  letters  had  quickened  the  human  mind 
everywhere  in  western  Europe;  and  there  were 
many  eminent  writers  in  France,  both  in  sympathy 
with  the  court  and  hostile  to  it  on  account  of  its 
attitude  towards  the  Reformers.  Rabelais  satirized 
all  parties.  Amyot  translated  the  ancients  and  fos- 


To  the  Revolution  of  1789.  11 

tered  a  sort  of  heathen  republic  in  the  minds  of 
men.  Montaigne  observed  the  stir  of  parties  tran- 
quilly, and  had  doubts  and  scruples  about  them  all. 
Ronsard  initiated  the  imitation  of  the  excellences 
of  the  ancients  in  poetry,  and  carried  the  age  with 
him  into  a  great  stretch  of  pedantic  purism.  Calvin, 
driven  from  France,  established  in  Geneva  a  sort 
of  pastoral  theocracy,  and  formulated  doctrine  and 
government  there  for  a  large  section  of  the  Re- 
formed. Queen  Marguerite  displayed  in  her  writ- 
ings that  curious  contrast,  so  often  to  be  observed 
in  the  writers  of  this  age,  between  the  religious 
side  and  the  artistic  side  of  human  nature.  One  of 
her  books,  the  Miroir  de  Tame  Pecheresse,  a  work 
of  religious  devotion,  had  the  honor  of  being  con- 
demned by  the  Sorbonne  for  its  Reforming  tone. 
Another,  the  Heptameron  des  Nouvelles,  an  imita- 
tation  of  Boccaccio's  Decameron,  goes  even  further 
than  that  pleasant  book  in  the  license  of  some  of 
Its  tales. 

I  have  mentioned  the  efforts  of  Ronsard  to  im- 
prison the  forms  of  the  language  and  literature 
within  the  narrow  limits  of  rigid  rules  drawn  from 
the  best  writers  among  the  ancients.  Rabelais, 
thorough  scholar  though  he  wras,  was  bitterly  op- 
posed to  this  exclusive  homage  to  the  ancients  and 
submission  to  their  authority;  and,  though  the 
classical  school  gained  the  day  for  the  time  and 
produced  at  a  later  period  the  polished  but  artifi- 
cial gems  of  Corneille  and  Racine,  the  spirit  of 
modern  French  literature  is  more  in  unison  with 
the  free  and  riotous  fancy  of  Rabelais  than  with 
the  stiff  and  measured  march  of  the  school  that 
followed  Ronsard's  lead. 

Rabelais,  as  a  humorist,  still  holds  a  high  place 
in  the  literature  of  the  world,  and  ranks  as  a  great 
prose  Aristophanes.  His  fantastical  romance  of 
Gargantua  is  a  long  series  of  satirical  exposures  of 
all  the  follies  and  vices  of  his  day,  It  is,  however, 
often  so  foul  in  its  language  and  licentious  in  its 


12  French  Literature. 

exuberant  flow  of  high  spirits,  that  it  is  not  a  book 
to  be  placed  within  reach  of  every  comer.  Dimi- 
try's  Three  Good  Giants  strips  it  of  this  soiled  ves- 
ture. 

Of  all  the  writers  of  the  sixteenth  century  that 
have  come  down  to  us,  Montaigne  continues  to  be 
the  best  known,  the  most  read,  and  the  most  dearly 
loved.  The  secret  of  this  immortality,  aside  from 
his  merits  as  a  thinker,  lies  in  the  wonderful  way 
in  which  he  has  impressed  his  individuality  upon 
his  works.  Every  reader  of  the  essays  of  Michel 
de  Montangne  feels  that  he  knows  the  man  person- 
ally, and  that  he  is  a  lovable  man  to  know.  One 
element,  moreover,  of  their  charm  for  us,  and  a 
high  and  honorable  trait  in  the  character  of  Mon- 
taigne, is  the  spirit  of  tolerance,  of  true  charity  of 
judgment,  which  the  Essays  breathe.  This  feature 
in  the  man's  character  is  the  more  wonderful,  in 
that  it  was  wholly  alien  to  the  spirit  of  his  agec 
To  these  attractions,  he  adds  the  charm  of  an  ex- 
ceedingly clear,  sweet,  and  flowing  style,  and  a 
reflective  temper  peculiarly  pleasing  to  the  reader 
of  leisure. 

Bulwer-Lytton,  in  one  of  his  own  admirable 
essays,  calls  him  the  Horace  of  Essayists,  "  an  ap- 
pellation," says  he,  "  which  appears  to  me  appro- 
priate, not  only  from  the  subjective  and  personal 
expression  of  his  genius,  but  from  his  genial 
amenity ;  from  his  harmonious  combination  of 
sportiveness  and  earnestness;  and,  above  all,  from 
the  full  attainment  of  that  highest  rank  in  the  sub- 
jective order  of  intellect,  when  the  author  in  the 
mirror  of  his  individual  interior  life,  glasses  the 
world  around  and  without  him,  and,  not  losing  his 
own  identity,  yet  identifies  himself  with  infinite 
varieties  of  mankind."  The  French  language  owes 
much  to  the  inimitably  easy  style  of  the  old  Gas- 
con country-gentleman. 

The  establishment  of  the  Academic  Francaise, 
under  the  auspices  of  Cardinal  Richelieu,  formed  a 


To  the  Revolution  of  1789.  13 

nucleus  for  the  clustering  of  French  literary  genius 
of  every  order.  Kichelieu's  bad  taste  and  literary 
jealousies — for  he  was  himself  a  writer — do  not 
seem  to  have  hindered  the  development  of  real 
genius  ;  and  his  patronage  of  bad  poets  acted  as  a 
stimulus  upon  the  good,  and  gave  them  the  advan- 
tage of  a  foil  to  set  off  their  own  excellence.  It 
was  enough  that  the  atmosphere  should  be  literary  ; 
genius  had  a  climate  to  flourish  in. 

Corneille  now  appeared  to  grace  the  language 
with  his  classic  tragedies,  and  his  single  comedy, 
the  promise  and  foretaste  of  Moliere's  rich  fruitage. 
Drawing  inspiration  from  Seneca  and  the  Latin  his- 
torians on  the  one  hand,  and  from  the  Spanish 
drama  on  the  other,  Corneille  gave  to  the  French 
stage  its  earlier  notemarks  of  dignity  of  style  and 
declamatory  grandeur  of  sentiment,  too  often  swell- 
ing into  bombast  in  his  imitators.  We  find  in  our 
English  literature  the  faults  of  the  French  tragic 
school  carried  almost,  to  unconscious  caricature  in 
the  extravagance  of  TDryden's  and  Nat.  Lee's  stilted 
heroes  and  heroines.  Corneille's  finest  plays  are 
Le  (7«/,  Horace,  Cinna,  and  Polyeucte.  To  these 
must  be  added  his  amusing  comedy,  Le  Menteur. 

The  next  literary  period,  the  age  of  Louis  XIV., 
for  which  Eichelieu's  policy  paved  the  way  and  pre- 
pared the  splendors — emphatically  the  Augustan 
age  of  French  literature — abounds  in  great  writers 
of  every  kind. 

The  place  of  Corneille  in  the  tragic  world  of 
dramatic  literature  was  fully  filled  by  Racine,  whc 
was  to  the  elder  poet  what  Sophocles  was  to 
oEschylus.  Phe'dre,  that  admirable  play  of  passion, 
was  indeed  drawn  from  the  Phedra  of  Euripides; 
but  the  sober  evenness  and  moderation  of  Racine's 
genius  bring  him  into  closer  relationship  with 
Sophocles.  While  Racine  was  enriching  the  lan- 
guage with  powerful  tragedies,  first  on  profane 
themes  thrilled  through  with  human  love  placed  in 
pathetic  situations,  and  in  later  days  on  Biblical 


14  French  Literature. 

subjects  carefully  kept  free  from  that  passion  wliicli 
had  kept  alive  interest  in  his  earlier  pieces,  the 
prince  of  comedy  was  amusing  court  and  city  with 
his  witty  ridicule  of  all  the  whims  and  oddities  of 
the  day.  Moliere  carried  comedy  of  the  purely 
laughable  and  fun-moving  order  to  its  highest  per- 
fection. At  the  same  time,  being  himself  a  capital 
actor  and  one  of  the  ablest  stage-managers  that 
ever  lived,  as  well  as  dearly  beloved  by  his  fellow 
comedians,  he  created  the  celebrated  Comedie  Fran- 
$aise,  to  this  day  the  living  transmitter  of  all  the 
traditions  and  prestige  of  the  French  theatre  in  its 
best  days.  Moliere  was  thus  not  only  the  author 
whose  works  we  can  all  read  and  enjoy,  but  the 
power,  acting  through  the  coming  centuries,  by 
which  the  art  of  the  player  is  kept  from  decline. 

The  stage  showed  brightest;  but  there  was 
scarcely  a  department  of  literary  art  which  did  not 
at  this  time  shine  with  a  rich  effulgence  of  light. 
Pascal,  in  his  Lettres  Provinciates  and  his  Pensees, 
enriched  the  literature  with  keen  reasoning  and 
profound  thinking,  expressed  in  the  tersest  and 
neatest  of  styles.  Descartes  employed  the  lan- 
guage with  great  force  and  skill  in  the  domain  of 
speculative  research,  though  much  of  his  meta- 
physics was  expressed  in  Latin.  Bossuet,  Bourda- 
loue,  Massillon,  and  Fiddlier  preached  in  it  eloquent 
sermons  and  impressive  funeral  discourses.  F£n- 
elon  used  it  in  a  variety  of  ways ;  for  education  in 
his  romance  of  Telemaque  and  in  some  special 
treatises ;  for  controversial  writings,  in  which  he 
measured  swords  with  Bossuet;  for  philosophical 
disquisition ;  and  for  pulpit  oratory.  La  Fontaine 
produced  in  it  his  amusing  but  somewhat  improper 
Contes  and  his  exquisite  Fables;  Boileau,  his 
pleasant  Satires  and  Epitres,  and  his  comic  epic, 
Lutrin.  La  Eochefoucauld  and  La  Bruyere  put  it 
to  a  new  service  in  their  epigrammatic  Sentences 
and  Caracttres.  Letters,  such  as  those  of  Madame 
de  Sevigne' ;  and  Memoirs,  such  as  those  of  Cardi* 


To  the  Revolution  of  1789.  15 

nal  de  Retz  and  Madame  de  Stael,  and,  towards 
the  close  of  the  long  reign  of  Louis  XIV.,  those  of 
the  Due  de  St.  Simon,  make  a  peculiar  part  of 
French  literature,  distinctive  indeed,  as  no  other 
literature  possesses  so  many,  so  unreserved,  and  so 
ably  written  private  records  of  individuals  and 
families. 

This  age  was  followed  by  the  one  immediately 
preceding  that  great  rising  of  the  oppressed  com- 
mons of  France,  known  as  the  first  French  Revolu- 
tion. It  was  characterized  by  a  singular  passion, 
in  court  circles  and  among  the  literary  men  of  the 
day,  for  skepticism  in  the  moral  and  religious  field 
of  thought,  and  a  speculative  furore  for  fraternity, 
liberty,  and  equality,  in  the  political  and  social 
sphere. 

The  leaders  of  thought,  Montesquieu,  Voltaire, 
Rousseau,  and  Buffon,  were  all  deeply  imbued  in 
different  ways  with  the  spirit  of  the  age,  and  did 
much  to  bring  about  the  tremendous  results  of  the 
next  century. 

Montesquieu,  in  his  Lettres  Persanes,  satirized 
the  life  of  his  day,  religious,  political,  social,  and 
literary.  In  his  Considerations  sur  les  Causes  de  la 
Grandeur  et  de  la  Decadence  des  JRomains,  he  threw 
out  many  admirable  suggestions  toward  the  study 
of  the  true  philosophy  of  history.  In  his  Esprit 
des  Lois,  he  ably  investigated  the  principles  which 
lie  at  the  foundation  of  organized  society.  The 
supporters  of  civil  liberty  in  every  land  owe  a  debt 
to  Montesquieu  for  the  impulse  which  he  gave  to 
studies  into  its  nature  and  principles. 

Voltaire  has  a  bad  name  with  serious  persons. 
But,  with  all  his  faults,  he  was  a  great  light  in 
French  literature  and  an  able  worker  in  the  cause 
of  human  progress.  He  laughed  down  many 
abuses.  So  universal  was  his  genius,  though  never 
of  an  exalted  type,  and  so  great  his  versatility, 
that  it  would  be  useless  in  a  brief  sketch  like  this 
to  so  much  as  name  the  many  fields  of  literature 


16  French  Literature. 

in  which  he  shone.  His  long  warfare  with  existing 
institutions  went  far  to  destroy  the  faith  of  his 
contemporaries  in  them,  and  helped  to  pave  the 
way  for  the  great  Eevolution. 

What  Montesquieu  did  by  acute  speculative 
thought  and  Voltaire  by  keenest  ridicule,  Eousseau 
did  by  sentiment.  Never  was  work  more  filled 
with  impassioned  sentiment  than  Eousseau's  Con- 
fessions. His  whole  charm  lay  in  this  appeal  to 
the  sensuous  part  of  our  nature.  His  philosoph- 
ical notions  and  socialistic  opinions  are  worth- 
less ;  but  they  chimed  in  with  the  growing  beliefs 
of  his  day,  and  there  was  therefore  great  practical 
power  in  his  Contrat  Social,  feeble  as  its  whole 
system  of  sociology  is  to  thinkers  of  our  time. 

Buffon's  contribution  to  the  destructive  ideas  by 
which  the  writers  of  this  period  prepared  the  way 
for  the  Eevolution,  was  not  important.  He  was, 
from  that  point  of  view,  only  one  among  the  deis- 
tical  scientists  of  his  time.  But,  in  a  literary  light, 
he  was  a  noble  figure  of  the  age.  His  Histoire 
naturelle,  faulty  enough  considered  as  a  scientific 
work,  popularized  the  study  of  nature  by  the 
beauty  of  its  style  and  the  charm  of  its  method. 
His  style  is  noble  and  eloquent,  and  his  love  for 
nature  sometimes  exalts  the  language  of  his 
descriptions  to  true  sublimity. 

Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre's  lovely  little  prose- 
idyll  Paul  et  Virginie,  serves  as  a  stepping-stone 
between  Eousseau  and  Chateaubriand.  It  has  the 
tenderness  of  sentiment  which  the  impassioned 
Jean- Jacques  had  brought  into  fashion,  and  at  the 
same  time  the  devotion  to  wild  nature  which  Cha- 
teaubriand was  to  enter  upon  in  the  next  genera- 
tion with  such  enthusiasm.  His  Chaumiere  in- 
dienne  and  Voyage  a  V  Isle  de  France  exhibit  the 
same  characteristics. 

Helve'tius,  materialistic  philosopher;  Diderot 
and  d'Alembert,  the  encyclopedists  ;  Condillac,  the 
metaphysician;  Crebillon,  the  dramatist;  bis  son, 


To  the  Revolution  of  1789.  17 

Crebillon,  the  indecent  romancer;  Beaumarchais, 
the  brilliant  writer  of  comedy  and  unconscious 
herald  of  the  Revolution;  and  Le  Sage,  the  creator 
of  Gil  Bias,  all  belong  to  this  period. 

Le  Sage,  in  permanence  of  literary  fame,  is  by 
far  its  greatest  name.  The  others  are  marked 
names,  and  their  works  are  much  talked  about ;  Le 
Sage  is  read.  Only  sections  of  the  reading  public 
read  here  and  there  a  work  of  Voltaire  or  Rous- 
seau. Everybody  reads  Gil  Bias,  if  not  in  the 
original,  at  least  in  translated  form.  Eminently 
original  and  thoroughly  French,  though  borrowed 
in  a  general  way  from  the  Spanish  picaresco  ro- 
mances, it  holds  its  own  even  with  modern  readers, 
not  only  from  its  entertaining  vivacity,  wit,  and 
humor,  but  because  it  is  so  true  to  human  nature  in 
all  time.  To  use  the  words  of  Bulwer-Lytton,  in 
his  Essay  on  Knovjledye  of  the  World: 

"  The  knowledge  of  life  it  illustrates  is  so  vast,  that, 
in  substance,  it  remains  to  this  day  the  epitome  of  the 
modern  world.  Amid  all  the  mutations  of  external 
manners,  all  varying  fashions  of  costume,  stand  forth  in 
immortal  freshness  its  large  types  of  civilized  human 
nature.  Its  author  is  equally  remarkable  for  variety  of 
character,  formed  by  the  great  world,  and  for  accurate 
insight  into  the  most  general  springs  of  action  by  which 
they  who  live  in  the  great  world  are  moved.  Thus  he 
is  as  truthful  to  this  age  as  he  was  to  his  own." 

We  have  now  reached  the  eve  of  the  French 
Revolution  of  1789.  With  that  tremendous  event, 
all  changes  in  the  world  of  French  thought  and  feel- 
ing. The  old  disappears  in  blood.  The  classic 
taste  in  literature  vanishes  with  the  pomp  of  the 
ancien  regime ;  laws  and  letters  for  awhile  yield 
to  arms,  and  at  the  next  breathing-place  French 
literature  assumes  a  new  phase. 
2 


18  French  Literature. 


II. 

SINCE  THE  REVOLUTION  OF  1789. 

BEAUMARCHAIS,  the  author  of  those  witty  come- 
dies, Le  Barbier  de  Seville  and  Le  Mariaye  de  Fi- 
garo, was  the  immediate  precursor  of  the  Kevolu- 
tion  of  1789.  He  it  was  who,  by  bitterly  satiriz- 
ing in  his  famous  Memoir es  the  infamous  Parlement 
Maupeou,  showed  the  poison  that  was  sapping  the 
very  life-blood  of  national  existence.  He  it  was 
who  gave  the  finishing  stroke  in  the  war  of  the 
wits  against  the  already  tottering  edifice  of  absolu- 
tism in  France. 

Voltaire  had  broken  the  spell  of  religion  such 
as  that  age  knew  it — a  superstition  or  a  hypocrisy. 
Rousseau,  in  passionately  advocating  the  rights  of 
man,  had  dimmed  the  prestige  of  birth  and  rank. 
Beaumarchais,  in  lifting  the  veil,  with  unrivaled 
skill  as  a  pleader  of  his  cause,  from  the  court  that 
was  bribed  to  wrong  him,  revealed  the  utter  cor- 
ruption that  was  poisoning  the  fountains  of  justice, 
and  opened  the  eyes  of  the  people  to  the  fact  that 
their  last  safeguard  against  tyranny  was  gone.  His 
brilliant  attack  excited  the  admiration  of  Yoltaire, 
whose  pen  had  often  served  the  same  cause  and  had 
been  dipped  in  the  same  gall.  Villemain  lavishes 
his  eulogies  upon  the  art  of  Beaumarchais'  forensic 
eloquence : 

"  That  art  of  filling  with  venom  things  the  most  inno- 
cent, of  mingling  with  a  seemingly  simple  narrative  lit- 
tle calumnies,  of  lying  with  grace,  of  insulting  with  an 
air  of  candor,  of  being  ironical,  biting,  pitiless,  of  plung- 
ing the  point  of  sarcasm  into  the  wound  already  made, 
then  of  appearing  serious,  conscientious,  reserved,  and 
eoon  after  of  barking  on  a  full  cry  of  bad  passions  all  for 


Since  the  Revolution  of  1789.  19 

the  good  of  the  good  cause,  of  interesting  self-love,  of 
amusing  malice,  of  flattering  envy,  of  exciting  fear,  of 
rendering  the  judge  an  object  of  suspicion  to  the  audi- 
ence and  the  audience  terrible  to  the  judge;  that  art 
of  humiliating  and  of  attracting,  of  threatening  and  of  im- 
ploring; that  art,  above  all,  of  causing  his  adversaries  to  be 
so  laughed  at  that  one  begins  to  believe  that  people  so 
ridiculous  can  never  be  in  the  right ;  in  fine,  all  that  ar- 
senal of  malice  and  of  eloquence,  of  wit  and  of  passion, 
of  reason  and  of  invective, — this  is  what  makes  up  some 
part  of  the  Memoirs  of  Beaumarchais ! " 

The  same  potent  spirit  of  irony  flamed  triumph- 
antly through  the  scenes  of  his  brilliant  comedies. 
The  age  demanded  tremendous  negation  of  every 
force  that  held  authority  in  the  land,  for  all  were 
supporting  tyranny  and  oppression  and  misrule. 
In  all  the  literature  of  the  day  this  destructive 
philosophy  found  a  vent;  but  it  was  especially 
potent  on  the  stage.  In  tragedy,  there  were  inces- 
sant tirades  against  fanaticism.  In  comedy,  there 
were  as  ceaseless  utterances  in  favor  of  equality. 
In  the  comedies  of  Beaumarchais,  the  fire  burned 
more  fiercely  and  with  a  brighter  and  more  beauti- 
ful blaze  than  elsewhere.  His  Figaro  has  been 
said  to  have  given  the  signal  and  the  programme 
of  the  Revolution.  He  is  the  representative  of  the 
superior  intelligence  that  finds  itself  in  a  state  of 
social  inferiority.  He  shows  the  disaccord  of  or- 
ganized society,  the  unhappy  contrast  of  capacity 
and  condition.  It  was  madness  in  the  government 
of  the  day  to  have  permitted  the  representation 
of  a  piece  which  brought  the  light  of  genius  to 
bear  upon  such  inequalities. 

The  strange  thing  about  it  all  is  that  the  ruling 
class  felt  vaguely  what  \vas  corning,  and  yet  made 
no  provision  for  the  evil  days.  Louis  XV.  said, 
"It  will  last  my  time."  No  effort  was  made  to 
reform  the  stale.  The  Parlement — which  was  the 
judicial  body  in  Fr.mce — held  stoutly  to  its  privi- 
leges;  the  court  continued  its  abuses;  the  clergy 


20  French  Literature. 

kept  up  the  spirit  of  intolerance ;  the  nobles  abated 
not  one  jot  of  their  outrageous  claims ;  the  king 
held  firmly  to  the  traditions  of  arbitrary  power. 

At  last  the  storm  burst,  and  all  was  swept  away 
— the  whole  order  of  things  that  belonged  to  the 
France  of  Louis  XV.  In  the  whirl  of  tragic 
events,  there  was  no  room  for  literature.  Men  do 
not  create  art  when  the  house  is  tumbling  down 
upon  their  heads.  The  reign  of  the  guillotine  was 
not  propitious  to  the  growth  of  taste.  Anarchy 
led  to  the  Empire ;  but  the  first  Empire  was  one 
long  series  of  wars,  and  what  literary  workers 
there  were,  were  either  in  opposition  or  ready  at 
a  moment's  warning  to  take  that  position.  Mad- 
ame de  Stae'l  was  of  the  first  class ;  Chateaubriand, 
of  the  second. 

They  were  the  first  of  the  romantic  school  in 
France.  Kousseau  and  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre 
had  given  the  impulse  and  had  some  share  in  fur- 
nishing them  with  the  keynote  of  those  prose- 
poems  by  which  they  are  best  known.  But  it  was 
they  who  first  fairly  introduced  their  countrymen 
to  new  ideas  and  made  them  take  an  interest  in  a 
world  outside  of  France.  Madame  de  Stae'l  studied 
Germany,  and  wrote  a  book  about  it.  ISAllemagne 
showed  the  new  influence  and  the  new  tendency. 
Like  the  Germans — Goethe  and  the  rest — she  went 
to  Italy,  too,  for  inspiration ;  and  the  new  romantic 
spirit,  revealed  in  her  Corinne,  fed  its  nascent  iervors 
on  the  still  smouldering  incense  of  the  old  classic 
and  mediaeval  art. 

Chateaubriand,  singular  compound  of  reformed 
skeptic  and  of  a  politician  oscillating  between  re- 
publicanism and  legitimacy,  drew  a  fresh  source  of 
inspiration  from  his  travels  in  America,  where  he 
was  especially  impressed  by  the  wild  forests  still 
haunted  by  bird  and  beast  alone  and  the  mighty 
river  down  the  long  course  of  which  La  Salle  had 
lately  made  his  lonesome  way.  These  and  the 
relics  of  a  civilization  found  among  that  singular 


Since  the  Revolution  of  1789.  21 

tribe,  the  Natchez,  seem  to  have  greatly  struck  his 
imagination.  His  Atala,  his  Genie  du  Christ- 
ianisme,  his  Les  Martyrs,  prompted  by  the  wonders 
he  had  seen  and  by  the  enthusiasm  which  Christian 
heroism  produced  in  his  susceptible  spirit,  exer- 
cised a  powerful  influence,  though  not  a  permanent 
one,  upon  the  age.  His  little  pamphlet,  De  Bona- 
parte et  des  Bourbons,  was  declared  by  Louis  XVIII. 
to  be  worth  an  army  of  100,000  men  in  favor  of  the 
royalist  party.  Yet  he  had  been  an  embassador  in 
Napoleon's  service,  until  the  murder  of  the  Due 
d'Enghien.  Nor  did  Chateaubriand  remain  the 
staunch  royalist  he  must  have  felt  himself  to  be  at 
the  time  he  produced  the  pamphlet  so  much  ex- 
tolled by  the  Bourbon  prince.  In  his  last 
political  work,  he  sets  forth  as  his  political  creed  : 
"  I  am  a  Bourbouist  in  honor,  a  Monarchist  on 
grounds  of  rational  conviction;  but  in  natural 
character  and  disposition,  I  am  still  a  Republi- 
can." 

He  was  a  brilliant  and  effective  writer,  of  warm 
imagination  ami  fine  powers  of  description ;  but  in 
all  that  he  has  written  there  is  a  want  of  a  sound 
philosophic  basis.  He  lacks  depth  and  solidity, 
and  reminds  us  of  wine  that  has  a  fine  sparkle  and 
pleasant  flavor,  but  is  deficient  in  that  quality 
which  connoisseurs  style  "body."  There  is  in  his 
literary  merits  and  demerits  a  marked  resemblance 
to  Lamartine,  or,  to  speak  more  justly,  it  should  be 
said  that  Lamartine  resembles  him. 

After  the  Napoleonic  age  carne  the  romantic  re- 
vival, with  an  especially  brilliant  luxuriance  in  the 
outgrowth  of  fiction  and  of  comedy.  We  shall 
find  the  withering  influence  of  Voltairean  unbelief 
and  the  sensual  influence  of  Rousseau's  sentiment- 
alism,  like  two  noxious  plants  flowered  into  full 
bloom,  both  impressing  themselves  still  upon  a 
large  portion  of  this  later  literature. 

The  gay  songs  of  Beranger,  that  went  to  the 
heart  of  a  people  naturally  joyous,  had  the  effect, 


22  French  Literature. 

during  the  dull  period  of  the  Eestoration,  of  restor- 
ing that  easy  temper  and  fondness  for  amusement 
which  the  horrors  of  the  Reign  of  Terror  and  the 
ceaseless  conscriptions  of  the  Emperor  had  for  so 
long  a  time  made  impossible  to  the  French.  Btranger 
was  thus,  all  unconsciously,  the  cause  of  a  return 
to  the  old  passion  for  the  stage,  although  the  pleas- 
ure of  the  Parisians  in  that  form  of  amusement  had 
never  wholly  lapsed. 

"The  stage  in  France,"  says  M.  Franeisque  Sarcey, 
"  is  a  national  and  especially  a  Parisian  pleasure.  Mo- 
liere,  Reynard,  Beaumarchais,  Voltaire,  Scribe,  and  many 
other  less  celebrated  dramatic  authors  were  born  within 
sight  of  the  walls  of  Paris.  Everybody  in  Paris  is  fond 
of  the  play,  and  is  a  good  judge  of  it.  Even  at  the 
present  moment,  when  this  passion  is  not  so  strong  as  it 
used  to  be,  many  a  young  man  will  go  without  his  dinner 
in  order  to  treat  himself  to  the  play.  How  many  will 
stand  for  three  or  four  hours  together  at  the  doors  of  a 
theatre,  in  the  midst  of  rain  or  snow,  to  see  the  piece  that 
has  ca,ught  the  taste  of  the  public  !  Everything  that  re- 
lates to  dramatic  literature  is  warmly  discussed,  and  there 
is  not  a  woman,  however  imperfectly  educated  she  may 
otherwise  be,  who  is  not  capable  of  giving  expression  to 
her  opinions  on  theatrical  matters,  witli  a  knowledge  of 
the  subject  sometimes  astonishing.  Every  soil  has  its 
own  peculiar  virtues  ;  in  the  same  way  every  nation  has 
its  own  peculiar  aptitude.  The  passion  of  the  French  is 
the  stage." 

Napoleon  loved  the  theatre,  and,  while  his  jeal- 
ousy of  public  discussion  had  an  injurious  effect 
upon  the  development  of  literature  under  the  Em- 
pire, he  fostered  the  great  company  that  was  proud 
of  calling  itself  La  Maison  de  Moltire — I  mean,  the 
famous  Comedie  Fran^aise — with  aid  from  the  pub- 
lic treasury. 

The  social  changes  brought  about  by  the  Revo- 
lution furnished  the  stage  with  a  new  audience. 
The  Court  was  no  longer  the  arbiter  of  taste.  For 
some  time  after  the  Restoration,  the  bourgeois  pub- 
lic passed  judgment  upon  the  pieces  represented 


Since  the  Revolution  of  178$.       •        1'6 

and  the  actors  who  played  in  them.  "They  were 
called,"  says  M.  Sarcey,  "the  habitues  because  they 
went  to  the  theatre  every  night;  and  when  the  nc- 
tor,  entering  on  the  scene,  perceived  those  long  rows 
of  bald  and  shining  heads,  on  which  the  chandelier 
shed  its  rays,  he  was  seized  with  a  slight  trembling. 
I  saw  the  last  remnants  of  this  circle  in  my  youth  : 
to-day  they  have  entered  into  the  category  of  fos- 
sils." 

These  solid  old  citizens  of  Paris  were  tenacious 
of  the  past ;  they  clung  to  tradition,  and  retarded 
the  advancement  of  dramatic  literature.  Aided  by 
such  an  audience,  the  superb  acting  of  Rachel  alone 
kept  up  the  classic  stage,  in  opposition  as  it  was  to 
the  tastes  and  aspirations  of  the  younger  genera- 
tion. The  revolt  of  the  romantic  school  against 
the  fetters  of  classicism  began  about  the  year  1830 
The  spirit  of  revolution  was  astir  then,  but  the 
classic  drama  still  continued  to  hold  the  old  House 
of  Moliere.  It  was  obly  after  the  Revolution  of 
18-18  that  the  new  romantic  school  fairly  succeeded 
in  overcoming  the  prejudice  of  the  public  in 
favor  of  the  classic  drama,  and  gained  a  footing 
even  on  the  stage  of  the  Theatre  Fran^aise.  Of 
these  who  won  distinction  in  dramatic  composition 
in  these  later  days  I  can  mention  here  only  the 
names  of  Boursault,  Regnard,  Legrand,  Lemercier, 
Victor  Hugo,  Dumas,  Scribe,  Alfred  de  Vigny,  Al- 
fred de  Musset,  and  Octave  Feuillet.  Some  of  these 
merit  and  will  receive  fuller  mention. 

But  the  greatest  development  of  modern  French 
literature  has  been  in  the  form  of  fiction.  Espe- 
cially in  romantic  fiction  has  this  development 
taken  place,  for  the  French  have  a  gift  in  that  direc- 
tion. They  have  never  yet  been  excelled  in  the 
construction  of  the  plot,  they  have  a  fine  feeling 
for  sentiment,  they  are  keen  observers  of  life  and 
manners,  they  have  a  wholesome  horror  of  weary- 
ing the  reader  by  serious  digressions,  they  are  care- 


24:  French  Literature. 

ful  and  patient  in  their  workmanship,  and  they 
pay  great  attention  to  style. 

If  there  is  a  philosophy  at  the  bottom  of  their 
pictures  of  life,  they  are  far  too  artistic  to  bring  it 
to  the  front.  If  they  describe  minutely,  they  take 
the  greatest  pains  that  the  descriptions  shall  be 
picturesque  or  else  amusing.  There  is  little  of  that 
humor  which,  in  English  literature  at  its  best, 
blends  philosophic  reflection  with  feeling,  in  so  sub- 
tle a  way  that  oftentimes  the  smile  and  the  tear  are 
almost  equally  ready  to  come  at  the  waving  of  the 
enchanter's  wand.  But  there  is,  in  the  place  of  hu- 
mor, a  sparkling  wit,  an  engaging  vivacity,  q, 
charming  archness,  that  one  finds  rarely  in  English 
writers. 

There  is  not  much  real  appreciation  of  country 
scenery — one  of  the  sweetest  traits  in  the  art  of 
English  genius — except  in  George  Sand  (Madame 
Dudevant)  and  a  few  others.  But  the  life  of  cities, 
and  especially  of  Paris,  is  made  as  familiar  to  us  as 
if  we  had  grown  up  amid  the  same  scenes ;  and 
there  is  no  literature  which  can  excel  the  French 
in  these  realistic  pictures. 

Alexandre  Dumas,  the  elder,  the  most  prolific 
of  them  all,  is  also  the  most  dashing  and  vivacious 
of  these  romancers — a  Murat  among  story-tellers. 
He  is  also  one  of  the  most  entertaining,  and  is  per- 
haps the  best  known  in  this  country,  having  myri- 
ads of  readers  everywhere.  The  catalogue  of  his 
writings  numbers  several  hundreds  of  volumes,  and 
they  all  belong  to  the  type  of  the  sensational 
romance.  Most  of  them  deal  with  past  times,  and 
profess  to  be  historical  novels,  though  they  are  true 
neither  to  character  nor  to  fact.  Yery  many  of 
them  were  written  in  a  sort  of  literary  partnership 
by  men  who  found  it  pay  them  better  to  publish 
under  Dumas'  name  than  under  their  own.  Dumas 
supervised  them  and  gave  them  the  final  stamp  of 
his  own  rapid  and  readable  style.  But  his  real 
masterpieces  were  unquestionably  -wholly  his  own 


Since  the  Revolution  of  17S9.  25 

work.  Such  were  Les  Trois  Mousquetaires,  Le 
Comte  de  Monte-  Cristo,  and  his  inimitable  books  of 
travel. 

Eugene  Sue  takes  rank  with  Dumas  as  of  the 
sensational  school.  He  excelled  in  intricate  and 
ingeniously  complicated  plots  His  energetic 
movement  kept  up  the  interest  of  the  reader  at 
every  stage  of  the  action,  He  especially  under- 
stood the  art  of  contrast,  and  by  the  use  of  power- 
ful dramatic  situations  urged  the  mind  of  the  reader 
to  intense  excitement.  Nothing  could  remove  the 
spell  until  the  last  page  was  reached,  and  then 
there  remained  long  hovering  over  the  imagination, 
weird  phantoms  and  wild  visions,  that  mesmerized 
the  spirit  into  a  longing  for  the  renewal  of  the 
feverish  intoxication.  There  was  peril  for  young 
minds  in  this  over-heating  of  the  brain,  and  at  the 
same  time  Sue's  political  and  social  ideas  were 
eminently  dangerous.  It  is  likely  that  the  crude 
philosophy  of  Communism  owes  not  a  little  to  the 
deep  impressions  made  on  the  lower  classes  by  the 
propagandism  of  immature  minds  that  had  fed  on 
the  unwholesome  thought  fermenting  in  Les 
Mysteres  de  Paris,  Le  Juif  Errant,  and  Mathilde. 

Equally  sensational,  and  in  a  really  insane  way 
at  times,  but  widely  different  in  personal  pride,  in 
intensity  of  conviction,  and  in  style,  from  Dumas 
and  Sue  is  Victor  Hugo.  The  author  of  Notre 
Dame  de  Paris,  of  Quatre-vinyit-treize,  of  Les  Mis- 
erables,  with  a  wild  and  lyrical  style,  sometimes  ab- 
surdly oracular,  sometimes  epigrammatic,  some- 
times as  fantastic  as  that  of  Carlyle,  has  produced 
remarkable  pictures — pictures,  it  is  true,  of  a  life 
rather  ideal  than  real,  but  still  pictures  of  what 
might  be  true.  He  is  a  poet  always,  whether 
writing  in  verse  or  in  prose,  and  as  a  poet  he  is  a 
fine  manifestation  of  the  Gothic  type  as  distin- 
guished from  the  classical.  Hugo  rejects  form,  and 
puts  his  faith  in  the  idea  he  would  express :  hence 
the  frequent  uncouthness  of  his  form  and  the  cloudi- 


26  French  Literature, 

ness  of  the  idea.  He  represents  a  French  type  at 
the  very  antipodes  in  its  remoteness  from  that  type 
represented  by  Kacine  or  Moliere,  or  even  by  Vol- 
taire and  Le  Sage. 

Balzac  gives  us  another  type.  He  is  the  pro- 
found analyst  of  the  human  heart,  the  subtle 
searcher  into  its  follies,  its  frailties,  its  whimsies, 
its  passions,  but  morbid  and  bitter  in  the  effects  he 
produces.  He  is  perhaps  best  known  by  his  Le 
Pere  Goriot,  La  Peau  de  Chagrin,  and  Eugenie 
Orandet. 

There  was  greater  variety  in  Madame  Dudevant. 
She  wrote  at  first  in  conjunction  with  Jules  Sandeau 
and  from  him  adopted  part  of  his  name,  so  as  to  be 
.Known  in  literature  as  George  Sand.  Full  of 
poetic  fancy,  gifted  with  a  graceful  and  lucid  style, 
impassioned  in  her  own  nature,  and  yet  versatile 
enough  to  escape  the  monotony  of  passion — per- 
haps through  the  largeness  of  her  sympathies — she 
charmed  and  entertained  many  different  classes  of 
readers.  Her  Indiana  and  her  Jacques  were  ro- 
mances of  the  passions.  Her  La  Petite  Fadette, 
La  Mare  d*Auteuil,  and  Nanette  were  simple, 
touching  country-stories,  almost  pastorals.  Others 
of  her  numerous  works  were  Lelia,  Mauprat,  Andre, 
Consuelo,  and  Flammarande.  The  story  of  her  life 
is  a  curious  one,  and  there  is  an  especial  interest  in 
the  account  of  her  relations  with  Alfred  de  "Musset, 
that  unhappy  poet  whose  rich  fancy  and  melodious 
utterance  unluckily  charmed  her  for  awhile  and 
entrapped  him  into  an  ill-assorted,  as  well  as  unlaw- 
ful, union.  Madame  Dudevant's  life  was  immoral, 
and  so  were  her  earlier  books ;  but  the  ferment  in 
her  genius  seems  to  have  worked  off  in  the  course 
of  time,  and  left  pure  wine. 

Paul  de  Kock,  though  making  no  insidious 
attacks  on  morality,  won  the  reputation  of  an  auda- 
cious tempter  of  the  young  into  the  paths  of  sin. 
He  certainly  is  not  clean,  yet  there  is  «a  hearty 
jovialty  about  him,  a  robust  vitality,  that  makea 


Since  the  Revolution  of  1789.  27 

him  a  far  less  dangerous  sinner  than  are  those  sen- 
timental novelists  who  suggest  immoral  thoughts, 
or  preach  an  immoral  creed,  without  venturing  to 
name  the  sin  toward  which  they  cluster.  He  was 
a  prolific  writer,  both  of  novels  and  of  vaudevilles. 
His  son,  Henri,  has  written  novels  of  the  same  order. 

To  these  romancers  must  be  added  a  few  others 
of  note.  There  is  Edmond  About,  in  his  later 
years  almost  wholly  devoted  to  journalism  and 
politics,  but  whose  Tolla,  Le  Roi  des  Montagues, 
Germaine,  Uhomme  a  Voreille  cassee  and  Le  Cos  de 
M.  Guerin  have  won  him  no  mean  name  among 
writers  of  fiction.  His  works,  fictitious  and  politi- 
cal, are  marked  by 'trench ant  sarcasm  and  fine 
irony,  as  well  as  by  original  surprises. 

There  are  Ernest  Feydeau,  the  author  of  Fanny, 
a  novel  of  thoroughly  maudlin  sentimentality; 
and  Flaubert,  whose  Madame  Bovary  is  a  romance 
of  the  grossly  physiological  type ;  and  Adolphe 
Belot,  whose  Femme  de  Feu  is  also  a  picture  of 
sensual  passion. 

I  should  name  too  Jules  Sandeau,  to  whom  we 
owe  a  fresher  and  sweeter  strain  in  his  charming 
romance  of  Madeline.  Then,  there  are  Soulie  and 
Souvestre  and  Me"ry:  Alphonse  Karr  and  Paul 
Feval ;  the  younger  Dumas,  Murger,  and  de  Mire- 
court;  de  Stendhal,  and  Chevalier.  To  these  may 
be  added  Charles  de  Bernard,  Prosper  Merime'e, 
Jules  Claretie,  Theophile  Gautier,  and  those  literary 
partners,  Erckmann-Chatrian,  who  have  done  so 
much  for  the  delineation  of  Alsatian  life.  Then, 
there  are  fimile  Gaboriau,  who  imitated  Poe  in  his 
minuteness  of  detail  and  ingenious  literary  puzzles  ; 
Jules  Verne,  who  struck  out  the  new  line  of  calling 
the  wonders  of  science  to  the  aid  of  fiction,  and 
who  seems  exhaustless  in  the  department  he  has 
created  ;  and  Daudet  and  Zola,  who  agree  in  their 
cynical  realism  and  contempt  for  decency,  though 
Zola  seems  to  revel  in  the  filth  of  all  that  misery, 
vice,  and  crime  which  he  depicts  with  so  repulsive 


28  French  Literature. 

a  minuteness,  while  Daudet  has  the  art  to  turn  his 
gaze  away  from  the  utterly  unclean. 

The  animated  pictures  of  Eussian  life,  painted  by 
the  lady  who  calls  herself  Henry  Greville,  furnish 
a  pleasant  relief  to  all  this  vile  prostitution  of  art. 

Of  the  poets,  Beranger,  often  styled  the  Burns 
of  France,  the  greatest  of  her  song- writers ;  and 
Lamartine,  most  sentimental  of  sentimentalists, 
belong  to  the  period  of  the  Eestoration.  Victor 
Hugo  ranks  high  as  lyric  poet,  as  well  as  among 
the  dramatists  and  romancers.  De  Vigny  and  De 
Musset  have  left  their  mark  on  the  poetry  of 
French  literature,  both  being  singers  of  melody  and 
power.  Sainte-Beuve's  reputation  rests  chiefly 
upon  his  admirable  criticisms,  but  he  also  sought 
to  win  fame  among  the  poets  of  the  romantic 
school.  Baudelaire  was  emphatically  the  poet  of 
unrighteousness  and  of  despair,  admiring  Poe, 
translating  and  imitating  him,  and  producing  the 
kind  of  poetry  that  lust,  opium,  and  hunger  might 
combine  with  a  certain  lurid  style  of  genius  to 
form.  Yet,  in  the  case  of  poor  Baudelaire,  absinthe 
may  have  painted  all  those  effects  which  I  have 
imagined  three  potent  demons  to  be  responsible 
for. 

Of  the  critics  the  most  eminent  in  modern  times 
have  been  Sainte-Beuve,  Armand  de  Pontmartin, 
and  Jules  Janin,  in  the  field  of  French  literature. 
Henri  Blaze  is  the  chief  critic  and  historian  of 
German  literature ;  and  of  English  literature  H.  A. 
Taine  is  confessedly  the  best  historian  of  literature 
in  any  language.  The  authors  of  histories  of 
French  literature,  either  for  certain  periods  or  for 
the  whole  of  its  extent,  have  been  numerous. 
Some  of  them  have  discoursed  only  on  the  Latin 
literature  produced  in  Gaul,  and  yet  have  called 
their  works  Discourses  on  French  Literature.  The 
greatest  names  among  the  writers  of  this  class,  and 
of  that  which  gave  some  account  of  French  litera- 
ture proper,  are  Littre,  Villemain,  Geruzez,  Demo- 


Since  the  Revolution  of  1789.  29 

geot,  Vinet,  Nettement,  Albert,  Charpentier,  Cart, 
Marque,  Nisard,  and  Sainte-Beuve. 

The  historians  must  be  mentioned  with  equal 
brevity.  They  are  Barante,  the  author  of  UHistoire 
des  Dncs  de  Bouryogne;  Guizot,  the  author  of 
IjHistoire  de  la  Civilization  en  Europe  and  the 
History  of  France;  Thierry,  the  author  of  UHis- 
toire  de  la  Conquete  de  TAngleterre  par  les  Normans  ; 
Lamartine,  the  author  of  ISHistoire  des  Girondins ; 
Michelet,  the  author  of  UHistoire  de  France;  to- 
gether with  Thiers,  Martin,  Delord,  Lanfrey,  Lenor- 
mant,  and  a  great  many  more. 

In  metaphysics,  the  chief  names  are  Victor 
Cousin,  Jouffroy,  Janet,  Lacour,  Laugel,  and  Vera. 
In  Christian  morality  and  ecclesiastical  dogma,  the 
most  eminent  writers  are  Lamennais,  with  his 
memorable  Sur  r  Indifference  en  Mature  de  Re- 
l.i'jinn  and  the  very  different  Paroles  d"1  unCroyant; 
Laccrdaire;  Montalembert,  and  Dupanloup.  In 
political  philosophy,  there  are  Chevalier,  De  Toc- 
queville,  and  Bonald.  In  philology  and  archaeol- 
ogy,  the  great  names  are  Champollion,  De  Sacy, 
Kenan,  Rernusat,  Littre,  Bida,  and  Gaston  Paris. 
In  socialistic  propagandism,  there  are  three  great 
visionaries,  Comte,  St.  Simon,  and  Fourier.  In  the 
sciences,  the  French  have  won  high  distinction  in 
that  world-literature,  which  utters  itself  in  every 
civilized  tongue.  Among  the  great  names  are 
those  of  Cuvier,  the  father  of  anatomy ;  Ampere 
and  Arago,  distinguished  in  so  many  sciences;  La 
Place,  Gay  Lussac,  and  Lcgendre. 

In  the  rapid  enumeration  just  made,  there  have 
necessarily  been  omitted  the  names  of  many 
writers  who  have  a  world-wide  reputation.  Such, 
for  instance,  are  Saintine,  the  author  of  that  charm- 
ing tale  of  prison-life,  Picciola;  Laboulaye,  a  most 
versatile  and  excellent  writer;  Madame  Craven, 
the  author  of  several  tender  and  thoughtful 
romances  of  deep,  religious  tone;  and  Madam  de 
Segur,  whose  fairy  tales  are  fresh  and  sparkling. 


30  French  Literature. 

It  is  pleasant  to  be  able  to  say,  in  closing  this 
brief  review  of  recent  French  literature,  that  the 
turbid  stream  of  unbridled  passion,  which,  like  the 
rushing  torrent  from  the  mountain,  swept  away 
with  the  primness  of  the  classic  fountain  and 
mimic  lake  their  limpid  purity  too,  has  begun  to 
exhaust  its  force  and  seems  to  be  depositing  its 
sediment  and  gradually  clearing.  The  strange  and 
offensive  phenomenon  of  a  Zola  stirring  up  the 
marsh-mud  at  the  bottom  serves  only  to  mark 
more  strongly  the  general  change  for  the  better. 
Decency  will  yet  come  back  to  cleanse  the  French 
imagination. 


Lays  of  Irouvbres.  31 


III. 

LAYS  OF  THE  TEOUVERES. 

HAVING  given  a  general  outline  of  French  liter- 
ature, from  the  earliest  utterances  of  the  race  in  a 
language  wHch  they  realized  to  be  something  dif- 
ferent from  broken  Latin,  down  to  the  writings  of 
our  own  day,  I  now  turn  back  to  invite  your  closer 
attention  to  single  periods,  or  even,  in  some  in- 
stances, to  individual  writers  of  marked  eminence. 

First,  then,  let  us  look  more  closely  into  the 
earliest  literature  of  the  French. 

The  provengal  literature,  though  the  prelude 
to  that  of  the  Trouveres  of  the  North,  cannot  fairly 
be  classed  as  a  par>  of  French  literature,  since  both 
in  language  and  in  sentiment  it  is  more  nearly  allied 
to  the  Italian  and  the  Spanish.  Properly  speak- 
ing, it  stands  apart  as  an  independent  literature, 
from  which  all  its  neighbors  drew  inspiration ;  the 
Suabian  Minnesingers  coming  nearest  to  it  in  spirit 
and  form. 

I  have  already  given  a  general  account  of  the 
origin  of  the  French  language,  and  shall  not  here 
pause  to  describe  in  detail  its  gradual  development. 
It  was  still  in  a  crude  and  formative  condition  in 
the  twelfth  century  when  those  lays  were  produced 
which  the  spirit  of  chivalry  gave  birth  to. 

The  youth  of  great  races  always  passes  through 
the  stage  called  the  Heroic  Age,  and  we  find  the 
same  general  characteristics  in  all  races  at  this 
stage,  whether  we  read  of  the  Achaians  in  the  lays 
of  Ilorner,  or  of  the  Persians  in  those  of  Firdausi, 
or  of  the  Burgundians  in  the  Nibeluntj  Lay.  But 
the  chivalry  of  the  Christian  races  of  the  twelfth 
and  thirteenth  centuries  was  characterized  by  one 


32  French  Literature. 

feature  which  is  found,  in  so  marked  a  degree,  in 
only  one  other  race — their  great  rivals  and  adver- 
saries, the  Arabians  after  they  had  received  the 
faith  of  Islam.  This  striking  feature,  this  power- 
ful element,  was  the  enthusiasm  of  religion.  It 
was  religious  fervor,  blended  with  the  passion  for 
war,  which  gave  rise  to  the  Crusades,  whether 
against  the  Moslem  in  Spain  or  the  Moslem  in  the 
Holy  Land  or  the  Moslem  in  Egypt  and  at  Tunis ; 
and  the  Crusades  in  turn  exalted  the  passions  which 
led  to  their  inception. 

From  these  enthusiasms  sprang  the  inspiration  to 
song — the  popular  song  of  the  twelfth  century. 
Human  love  soon  came  in  to  form  an  element  in 
this  popular  poetry,  and  completed  the  type  of  the 
chivalric  lay. 

Those  of  the  earlier  type,  in  which  love  has  no 
share,  or  but  a  slight  one,  are  called  Lays  of  Ex- 
ploits (Chansons  de  Geste)',  while  those  of  the  later 
type  are  known  by  the  general  name  of  The  Cycle 
of  the  Round  Table  (Le  Cycle  de  la  Table  ronde). 

The  Lays  of  Exploits  were  sung  by  the  Trou- 
veres,  as  Homer's  lays  had  been  sung  in  the  isles 
of  Greece  or  in  the  Hellenic  cities  by  the  Rhapso- 
dists.  They  were  of  two  classes,  the  first  drawing 
its  subjects  from  traditional  history  of  the  Teutonic 
races,  the  second  from  the  greatly  transmuted  facts 
of  antiquity  related  by  monkish  historians. 

The  Cycle  of  the  Round  Table  had  its  origin  in 
Breton  legends  transformed  by  Teutonic  influences. 

The  finest  of  the  heroic  poems  cluster  around 
the  already  mythical  figure  of  the  Frankish  Karl. 
The  great  leaders,  under  whom  the  armies  led  to 
battle  by  him  saved  the  Christian  races  of  the 
West  from  conquest  by  unbelievers,  very  soon  be- 
came mythical  heroes.  Roland,  around  whom  the 
most  romantic  legends  gathered,  is  named  but  once 
in  authentic  history.  It  is  only  casually  that  the 
chronicler  Eginharcl  mentions  him,  as  Warden  of 
trie  March  of  Britanny,  in  the  brief  passage  which 


Lays  of  the  Trouvtres.  33 

he  devotes  to  that  skirmish  in  which  the  Paladin 
fell. 

Yet,  when  three  centuries  had  passed  by,  it  was 
Roland  and  his  fatal  fall  at  Roncevaux  that  formed 
the  theme  of  Taillefer's  battle  chant  as  he  rode 
forth  from  the  Norman  line  at  Hastings  and  met 
the  Saxon  van  with  the  stirring  words  of  defiant 
song  ringing  from  his  lips.  The  slaughter  of  the 
Frankish  emperor's  rear-guard  in  that  famous  pass 
of  the  Pyrenees,  the  treason  of  Ganelon,  and  the 
heroic  deaths  of  Roland  and  his  comrades  formed 
the  earliest  subjects  of  epic  and  ballad  in  all  the 
literatures  of  the  Romance  races.  The  Frankish 
epic  of  Roland  (Chanson  de  Roland]  is  the  noblest 
of  those  early  lays. 

It  is  a  poem  of  more  than  four  thousand  lines  in 
length.  It  covers  events  which  transpired  in  the 
course  of  a  few  days.  It  shows  no  trace  of  clas- 
sical influence.  It  differs  from  the  Spanish  ballads 
in  that  it  is  not  lyrioal,  but  truly  epical  in  form  and 
tone.  Yet  it  is  probably  a  growth  from  a  number 
of  ballads  common  to  the  folk-song  of  the  Frankish 
race,  welded  by  some  artistic  hand  into  unity.  The 
poem  may  be  briefly  outlined  thus: — 

Charles  sits  on  his  golden  throne,  judging  his 
host,  under  a  pine.  The  paladins  all  around  him 
are  busy  with  the  game  of  chess.  As  they  are  thus 
engaged,  Blancandrin  comes  in  as  envoy  from 
Marsile,  sultan  of  the  infidels,  with  offers  of  peace 
and  treaty.  Marsile  promises  to  give  hostages  and 
to  follow  the  emperor  to  his  court  at  Aachen. 
Roland  exhorts  Charles  to  refuse  to  negotiate  with 
miscreants  who  had  once  slain  his  envoys.  Gan- 
elon, Roland's  stepfather,  fiercely  engages  in  the 
discussion,  and  there  is  soon  a  hot  altercation  be- 
tween the  two  barons. 

The  emperor  imposes  silence,  and  decides  to  send 
an  envoy  to  Marsile.  Ganelon,  in  spite  of  his  un- 
willingness, is  chosen.  Feeling  deeply  aggrieved, 
he  begins  in  his  heart  to  plot  treason  even  while  he 
3 


34:  French  Literature. 

rides  away  with  Blancandrin.  When  he  reaches 
the  camp  of  the  enemy,  he  cries  aloud  to  Marsile : 
"Be  thou  baptized,  oh  King  :  to  Aachen  shaltthou 
be  taken,  and  there  shalt  thou  be  judged,  and  there 
shalt  thou  die  in  shame  and  mean  estate." 

At  these  insulting  words,  Marsile  lays  his  hand 
on  his  spear.  But  he  controls  himself,  and  waits 
for  Ganelon  to  produce  Charles's  letter.  Marsile 
reads  it,  and  the  envoy,  who  is  nowhere  described 
as  lacking  in  courage,  sets  his  back  against  a  tree 
and  half  draws  his  sword.  Even  the  Saracens  say 
of  him,  "  A  noble  baron  is  this." 

Marsile  finds  the  letter  gentler  than  the  bearing 
of  the  envoy,  speaks  him  fair,  and  offers  him,  in 
true  Homeric  style,  a  gift  of  sable  skins.  He  asks 
Ganelon,  "  When  will  Charles  the  Old  be  weary  of 
war  ?  "  "  Never,"  answers  Ganelon,  "  while  his 
nephew  Eoland  and  the  Peers  are  on  ground." 

He  next  advises  Marsile  to  send  tribute  and  host- 
ages, and  at  the  same  time  to  lay  an  ambush  in 
the  passes  of  the  Pyrenees.  After  this  evil  counsel, 
he  swears  to  treason  on  the  relics  in  the  hilt  of  his 
sword,  and  returns  to  Charles,  bringing  with  him 
the  keys  of  Saragossa,  as  well  as  hostages  and 
tribute  from  the  sultan. 

On  the  eve  of  his  homeward  march,  Charles  has  an 
evil  dream.  In  the  vision  he  sees  Ganelon  seizing 
his  spear  in  the  pass  of  the  mountains.  He  awakes, 
weeping  at  the  omen  of  disaster.  But  the  warning 
is  without  effect.  He  yields  to  the  suggestion  of 
Ganelon,  that  the  rear-guard  should  be  assigned  to 
Eoland,  along  with  Evriard  de  Rousillon,  Turpin,  and 
Oliver.  Breaking  up  camp,  the  army  crosses  black 
rocks  and  dark  valleys,  shedding  tears  when  at  last 
they  come  in  sight  of  Gascony,  "at  memory  of  their 
fiefs  and  fields  and  of  their  little  ones  and  gentle 
wives." 

While  the  host  is  thus  melted  to  tender  feelings  at 
the  thought  of  their  nearness  to  their  homes,  the 
rear-guard  begin  to  note  the  advance  of  the  Sara- 


Lays  of  the  Trouvbres.  35 

cens.  "  We  shall  have  battle,"  says  Oliver,  as  he 
hears  the  sounds  of  an  approaching  army.  "  God 
grant  it,"  cries  Eoland ;  "  never  let  bad  ballad  be 
sung  of  us." 

Oliver  begins  to  express  his  suspicion  of  Gan- 
elou's  treason.  But  Koland  stops  him.  Then  Oli- 
ver urges  him  to  use  his  magic  horn,  the  Olifant 
(horn  of  elephant's  tusk),  to  bring  Charles  and  the 
main  army  to  their  aid.  But  Roland  refuses.  "In 
sweet  France,"  he  cries,  "  I  would  lose  my  fame." 

The  Saracen  host  comes  on.  Bishop  Turpin  ab- 
solves the  Christians,  though  leaves  and  grass  are 
the  only  creatures  of  God  that  can  serve  for  the  sa- 
cramental elements. 

Then  the  Franks  cry,  "Mount  Joie,"  and  address 
themselves  to  battle.  Marsile's  nephew,  Aelroth, 
rides  along  the  Saracen  line,  shouting  taunts  to  the 
Christians.  The  two  hosts  rush  together  in  fierce 
onset.  Roland  drives  his  lance  through  Aelroth's 
breastplate  and  breast.  Oliver  hurls  down  Faus- 
seron,  "  lord  of  the  land  of  Datban  and  Abiron." 
Turpin  slays  King  Corsablyx. 

Fighting  furiously  with  spear  and  battle-axe,  the 
Franks  for  a  time  seem  to  be  driving  back  the  en- 
emy. Siglorel,  another  chief  of  the  heathen,  "the 
enchanter  whom  Jupiter  had  led  through  hell," 
falls  before  the  charge  of  the  knights. 

Lances  are  broken  and  cast  aside.  The  knights 
draw  their  swords  ;  Oliver,  his  bright  blade  Haute- 
claire;  Roland,  that  famous  brand  Durandal.  They 
cut  their  way  through  the  •  dense  masses  of  the 
enemy. 

But  the  heathens  are  re-enforced,  the  Christians 
are  now  few  in  number.  Roland  thinks  it  time  to 
wind  his  horn.  But  Oliver  mocks  him  with  the 
question :  "  Wilt  thou  not  lose  thy  fame  in  sweet 
France?  Ah,  never  now  shalt  thou  lie  in  the  arms 
of  Aide,  my  sister."  * — But  Turpin  interposes. 

*The  lady  Aide,  liere  referred  to,  dies  at  the  news  of  Roland's  death  ; 
aud  this  is  the  only  love-note  in  the  poem. 


36  French  Literature. 

"Nay,  sound,"  says  he.  "We  shall  have  burial  at 
our  friends'  hands,  and  shall  not  be  the  spoil  of 
wolves." 

Then  Roland  blows  till  blood  starts  from  his 
mouth  ;  and  the  echo  of  that  dread  horn  winds 
through  the  passes  of  the  mountain  and  rings  above 
the  tempest  of  wind  and  the  thunder  and  the  grand 
moans  of  nature  at  the  hero's  death.  Charles  hears 
the  death-blast,  and  knows  at  once  that  his  nephew 
is  in  great  need.  At  once  he  divines  Ganelon's 
treason,  and  lie  hands  him  over  to  the  cooks  and 
camp-followers  to  be  bound  and  tormented.  But 
the  worn-out  remnant  of  the  rear-guard  are  too 
hard-pressed  to  be  saved  at  this  late  hour. 

"The  black  folk,  that  have  nothing  white  save 
the  teeth,"  fall  on  the  weary  knights  in  vastly  su- 
perior numbers.  Never  shall  the  knights  see  again 
"the  land  of  France,  that  very  sweet  country." 

Oliver  is  wounded  to  the  death  by  the  hand  of 
the  Caliph,  but  cuts  him  down  at  the  same  time. 
Oliver,  whose  eyas  are  dimmed  by  blood  and  the 
nearness  of  death,  strikes  out  so  blindly  that  he 
smites  Roland  on  the  crest. 

"My  lord  companion,  do  you  this  of  purpose?" 
asks  Roland.  "Not  so,  for  I  hear  thee,  but  thee 
not,  friend  Roland,  God  help  thee,"  cries  Oliver. 

Roland  forgives  the  blow,  and  at  that  word  they 
bow  to  each  other  in  knightly  courtesy.  Roland's 
horse  being  slain,  and  he  almost  exhausted,  he 
gathers  the  bodies  of  the  peers  in  a  circle  around 
the  dying  Turpin.  The  bishop  crosses  his  fair 
white  hands,  and  cries  that  they  shall  all  meet  soon 
among  the  Holy  Innocents. 

Roland  now  speaks  the  praise  of  Oliver  over  that 
knight's  dead  body,  and  lays  himself  down  on  the 
green  grass.  He  tries  to  break  the  blade  of  his 
good  sword  Durandal,  lest  it  fall  into  the  hands  of 
the  Saracens.  He  strikes  ten  blows  on  the  hard 
rock,  but  they  fail  to  snap  the  steel.  Then  he  cries: 
"  Ah,  Durandal,  how  clear  thouart  and  bright  that 


Lays  of  the  Trouv^res.  37 

shinest  as  the  sun.  With  thee  have  I  conquered 
lands  and  domains  for  Charles  of  the  white  beard. 
Yea,  now  for  thee  have  I  sorrow  and  heaviness, 
and  would  die  sooner  than  see  thee  in  pagan  hands. 
Holv  thou  art,  and  lovely;  in  thy  golden  hilt  is 
store  of  relics.  How  many  kingdoms  have  I  taken 
with  thee,  wherein  Charles  now  rules." 

Then,  casting  down  his  sword  and  horn,  he  throws 
himself  over  them  on  the  green  grass  under  a  pine. 
He  turns  his  face  to  Spain,  and  many  things  come 
into  his  mind — sweet  France,  and  the  Barons  of  his 
house,  and  Charles  his  lord.  Weeping  and  groan- 
ing heavily  at  the  thought  of  these,  he  stretches 
out  to  God  the  glove  of  his  right  hand.  Saint 
Gabriel  takes  it  from  his  grasp.  And  as  his  spirit 
leaves  the  body,  it  is  borne  to  Paradise  by  Saint 
Michael  of  the  Sea. 

The  poem,  however,  does  not  end  with  this  tragic 
picture.  The  overthrow  of  the  Saracens  and  the 
punishment  of  Ganelon  must  be  described.  The 
sun  stands  still  for  Charles,  while  the  Paynim  host, 
calling  on  Termagaunt  their  god,  are  driven  back 
to  Saragossa. 

In  Saragossa  Marsile,  furious  at  defeat,  beats  his 
image  of  Apollo  and  casts  the  idol  of  Mahomet 
into  a  ditch.  At  the  era  of  this  poem,  the  Chris- 
tians evidently  had  a  very  vague  conception  of  the 
religion  of  Iskim. 

Next  day,  the  final  battle  is  fought.  Charles  and 
his  Franks  fight  all  day.  "  Clear  is  the  moon  and 
flaming  are  the  stars,"  when  Charles  marches  into 
Saragossa.  There  is  no  obstacle  to  the  army's  re- 
turn this  time.  But,  when  the  Franks  come  back 
to  Aachen  without  Roland,  Aide  "  of  the  golden 
hair  and  the  bright  face"  falls  dead  at  Charles's  feet. 
The  grey  king,  musing  alone,  says,  "  My  God,  how 
painful  is  my  life  !" 

And  so  ends  the  "Geste''  that  Turoldus  made. 
It  comes  nearer  to  being  a  great  national  epic  than 
any  poem  the  French  have  ever  produced  since. 


88  French  Literature. 

But,  being  essentially  a  Frankish  lay,  it  could  not 
wholly  win  the  sympathies  of  the  composite  race 
formed  by  the  blending  of  Franks  with  Komanized 
Kelts  and  Basques. 

Yet,  Homer's  great  epics  glorified,  in  the  Achai- 
ans,  a  ruling  aristocratic  race  with  much  the  same 
position  in  relation  to  other  Hellenic  races  as  that 
held  by  the  Franks  towards  some  at  least  of  the 
subject  races  over  whom,  they  held  feudal  sway. 
Possibly,  had  there  been  no  revival  of  ancient 
learning  in  Western  Europe,  the  great  Chanson  de 
Roland  might  have  taken  somewhat  the  place  in 
French  literature  which  the  Iliad  held  in  that  of 
Hellas. 

This  poem  stands  almost  alone  in  its  spirit  of 
loyalty  to  the  Empire.  The  other  poems  relating 
to  Charles  and  his  family  manifest  that  tendency  to 
independence  on  the  part  of  the  great  barons  which 
was  essentially  the  temper  of  feudalism.  These 
lays  are  very  numerous.  One  of  them,  Ogier  de 
Danois,  would  seem  by  its  name  to  link  the  Frarik- 
ish  Emperor  with  the  Scandinavians.  But  modern 
criticism  has  traced  in  the  title  Danois  Ogier's  ori- 
gin from  the  forest  of  Ardeene.  Hence  this  pala- 
din of  Charlemagne  was  not  a  Dane,  but  a  Frank. 

In  this  story  the  game  of  chess  figures  mor« 
prominently  than  in  the  Lay  of  Eoland,  for  the 
hostility  of  Ogier  to  the  Emperor  is  caused  by  the 
killing  of  his  son  Caudouin  (Baldwin)  at  a  game 
with  the  son  of  Charlemagne  who,  enraged  at  being 
beaten,  dashes  the  heavy  chess-board  of  gold  and 
ivory  at  his  adversary's  head.  Escaping  to  Pavia, 
the  offended  vassal  performs  wonderful  acts  of 
prowess  in  the  war  that  ensues  between  Charles  and 
Didier,  King  of  the  Lombards,  in  whose  service  he 
fights  his  former  master. 

Later,  he  is  once  more  in  the  service  of  Charles, 
now  in  sore  need  of  his  stalwart  arm.  The  Em- 
peror has  been  even  forced  to  yield  his  son  to 
Oierg's  vengeance,  which,  checked  by  heavenly  in- 


Lays  of  the  Trouveres.  39 

terference,  lias  taken  the  mild  form  of  a  furious 
blow  with  the  fist  which  has  rolled  the  murderer  in 
the  dust.  Broiefort,  the  hero's  old  charger,  is 
brought  forward  from  among  the  pack-animals  of 
a  convent,  rejuvenated  at  sight  of  his  master  and 
the  apparel  of  war,  and  soon  returns  from  the  field 
with  Ogier  on  his  back,  victorious  over  the 
Saracens. 

Turold  is  the  name  assigned  to  the  author  of  the 
Lay  of  Roland,  while  Eaimbert  of  Paris  is  accred- 
ited with  the  authorship  of  the  Lay  of  Ogier. 
Turold  is  placed  by  scholars  in  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury, and  Raimbert  in  the  twelfth. 

But  there  are  poems  of  fire  and  invention,  which 
must  have  been  written  in  the  interval  between 
these  lays  of  Turold  and  Raimbert.  These  Chan- 
sons de  Geste  are  The  Crowning  of  Louis  (Le  Cou- 
ronnement  de  Louis),  The  Wagon  of  Nimes  (Le 
Charrois  de  Nimes},  The  Capture  of  Orange  (La 
Prise  d'Oranye),  The  Vow  of  Nivien  (Le  Vceu  de 
Vivien),  and  the  Battle  of  Aleschans  (Le  Bataille 
d1  Aleschans). 

These  poems  all  relate  to  the  same  hero,  Guill- 
aume  of  the  Short  Nose,  or,  as  he  is  also  called,  of 
the  Iron  Arm  ;  and  their  scenes  are  laid  in  the  time 
of  Louis  the  Easy-Natured,  son-  of  Charlemagne. 
Aleschans  is  JElisei  Campi,  the  cemetery  of  Aries. 

Among  other  famous  lays  are  the  Lay  of  the 
Lorraines  (Chanson  des  Lorrains),  by  Jean  of  Flagy ; 
Raoul  de  Cambrai,  the  author  of  which  is  unknown; 
and  the  Four  Sons  of  Aymon  (Quatre  Fils  Aymori), 
by  Huon  of  Villeneuve. 

"We  now  reach  lays  that  treat  of  real  events. 
The  Lay  of  Antioch  (  Chansom  d'Antioche)  is  one  of 
these.  It  was  composed  by  Richard  the  Pilgrim 
at  the  time  of  the  taking  of  Jerusalem  by  the  cru- 
saders, and  at  the  end  of  the  twelfth  centurv  was 
rewritten  by  Graindor  of  Douai.  It  is  regarded  as 
more  faithful  history  than  the  Latin  chronicles  of 


40  French  Literature. 

the  same  events  by  such  writers  as  "William  of 
Tyre. 

About  the  same  time,  the  Romance  of  Alex- 
ander (Roman  d'Alexandre]  was  produced  by  Lam- 
bert the  Short,  of  Chateaudun,  and  Alexander  of 
Bernai.  This  lay  differed  from  the  earlier  lays  in 
two  respects :  it  went  to  antiquity  for  its  subject, 
and  it  was  peculiar  in  the  structure  of  its  verse. 

The  elder  chanson  had  employed  a  loose  verse 
of  ten  or  eleven  syllables,  with  a  strong  time-beat 
about  the  middle  of  each  line.  This  romaunt  em- 
ployed, with  great  regularity,  the  verse  of  twelve 
syllables,  with  the  strong  time-beat  exactly  in  the 
middle,  so  that  each  run  of  sounds  up  to  the  breath- 
ing comprised  invariably  six  syllables,  or  at  any  rate 
three  distinct  time-beats.  It  was  the  use  of  this 
measure  in  the  Lay  of  Alexander,  which  gave 
rise  to  the  name  Alexandrine. 

The  basis  alone  of  this  poem  is  antique,  the  col- 
oring is  of  the  age  in  which  it  was  produced.  The 
manners  and  the  spirit  of  the  age  of  chivalry  are 
infused  into  it  throughout.  The  real  Alexander 
would  have  recognized  neither  himself  nor  his 
surroundings. 

The  lays  about  Arthur  and  the  Round  Table 
Knights  are  based  on  legends  the  Bretons  brought 
from  their  island  home  six  centuries  before. 
Wace,  the  Anglo-Norman,  worked  them  into  his 
Romance  of  Brute  (Roman  de  Brut).  But  the 
Trouvere,  Chrestien  of  Troyes,  first  gave  them 
really  poetic  form.  His  Tristan  was  written  in  a 
verse  of  eight  syllables  with  alternating  rhymes. 
Aime*  of  Varennes  used  the  same  verse  in  his 
Florimont. 

The  taste  for  marvels  and  for  amorous  incidents 
passed  from  the  lays  of  the  Bretons  to  those  of  the 
Franks.  Thus  we  find  the  sorceries  of  Maugis 
playing  a  great  part  in  the  Four  Sons  of  Aymon ; 
and  the  gallantries  of  Witikind's  queen,  in  Jeaa 
Borel's  Lay  of  the  Saxons. 


Lays  of  the  Trouvdres.  41 

The  romance  of  Parthenope  shares  this  new 
spirit.  The  hero,  Parthenope  of  Blois,  valiant  and 
lovable,  reverses  the  old  myth  of  Cupid  and  Psyche : 
By  the  light  of  a  lamp  he  indiscreetly  views  his 
unknown  mistress,  the  fairy  Melior,  Empress  of 
Constantinople  ;  and  loses  her  by  his  fatal  curiosity. 
But  deep  repentance,  deeds  of  prowess,  and  con- 
stant devotion  win  her  back  to  him  ;  and  he  ends 
by  reigning  openly  in  that  palace  into  which  he 
had  once  secretly  penetrated.  Singularly  enough, 
nearly  about  the  time  of  the  production  of  this 
lay,  a  French-speaking  prince,  Baldwin,  Count  of 
Flanders  and  Hainault,  did  mount  the  throne  of 
Constantinople,  as  the  first  Latin  Emperor  of  the 
Byzantine  empire.  Among  other  highly  imagina- 
tive romances  of  this  kind  may  be  named  Flore  et 
Blanche- Fleur,  Violette,  and  the  Chastelain  de 
Coucy. 

A  work  of  far  greater  interest  than  any  fairy 
tale  in  verse  was  the  outcome  of  the  historic  inci- 
dents just  rr.ontioned  in  connection  with  the  lay  of 
Parthenope.  Vlns  was  the  first  of  the  Chronicles, 
the  earliest  work  in  French  prose. 

Induced  by  the  Venetians  to  help  them  take 
Zara,  the  leaders  of  the  fourth  Crusade  had  been 
prayed  while  there  by  young  Alexis,  son  of  Isaac 
II.,  Emperor  of  Constantinople,  to  aid  him  against 
his  usurping  uncle  by  whom  his  father  had  been 
deposed  and  blinded.  The  Crusaders  agreed, 
restored  the  rightful  Emperor,  and  then  failing  to 
get  the  reward  promised  by  Alexis,  returned  to 
Constantinople,  seized  and  sacked  the  city,  and 
made  Baldwin  Emperor. 

This  striking  and  dramatic  series  of  events  was 
witnessed  and  afterwards  related  by  Geoffrey  de 
Villelmrdouin  (1150-1213)  in  his  Conquete  de  Con- 
stantinople.  This  is  a  work  of  liigh  merit.  A  mil- 
itary leader,  a  man  of  the  world,  a  negotiator  of 
treaties,  he  was  qualified  to  record  events  of  which 
he  knew  the  hidden  springs,  and  of  which  he  had 


42  French  Literature. 

seen  the  stirring  and  picturesque  scenes  enacted 
before  him. 

His  account  is  in  keeping  with  these  qualifica- 
tions. He  writes  simply,  soberly,  with  force,  stat- 
ing briefly  what  is  of  importance  and  leaving  out 
all  that  is  irrelevant.  Not  a  few  single  passages, 
isolated  from  their  context,  stand  out  as  complete 
pictures.  Such,  for  instance,  is  the  account  of  the 
negotiations  of  the  Crusaders  at  Venice  to  procure 
transports  and  to  secure  the  concurrence  of  the  re- 
public. Such  is  that  which  describes  the  emotion  of 
the  Crusaders  at  the  sight  of  Constantinople,  so 
beautiful  and  grand  a  city  as  it  seemed  to  those 
simple  Western  warriors,  and  so  capable  of  defence. 
Such  is  the  scene  of  the  re-instatement  of  the  blind 
Emperor,  where  the  blind  old  warrior  Doge  Dan- 
dolo  also  figures,  a  scene  vividly  described  from 
our  old  chronicler  by  the  younger  Bulwer-Lytton 
in  English  verse. 

So  far,  we  have  had  before  us  the  serious  side  of 
the  age  of  chivalry.  There  was  also  a  humorous 
side,  in  which  fables  played  their  part,  and  in 
which  the  true  folk-lore  multiplied  its  satirical 
fancies. 

Before,  however,  we  turn  aside  from  the  Lays, 
let  me  mention  one  charming  work  of  the  Trou- 
veres,  which  seems  to  have  been  born  of  the  de- 
light felt  by  its  author  in  the  beautiful  valleys  of 
Provence,  where  he  lays  the  scene  of  his  story. 
This  work  is  Aitcassin  et  Nicollette,  an  idyllic  song- 
story,  the  story  being  told  in  prose,  with  songs  in- 
terspersed through  it.  Competent  scholars  regard 
it  as  a  work  of  the  twelfth  century,  though  the 
Trouvere  who  wrote  it  has  caught  from  his  sojourn 
in  the  land  of  the  Albigenses  a  tone  of  satire  in 
regard  to  priests  and  things  clerical  that  was  char- 
acteristic of  a  later  age  among  his  countrymen. 
Alexandre  Bida,  philologist  and  artist,  has  put  it 
into  modern  French  and  daintily  illustrated  it;  and 
we  have  it  in  English  under  the  title,  "  The  Lovers 


Lays  of  the  Trouv^res.  43 

of  Provence."  It  is  a  fragrant  little  flower  of  ro- 
mance handed  down  to  us  through  the  centuries  as 
fre.sh  as  when  it  first  bloomed  in  that  wild  time. 

I  shall  close  this  chapter  with  brief  mention  of 
some  of  the  Chansons  de  Geste  not  yet  referred  to. 
Among  these  are  Berthe  aux  grands  pieds  by 
Adenes  le  Hoi,  embodying  legends  of  Charles  the 
Great's  mother;  Jean  de  Lanson,  Huon  de  Bor- 
deaux, Acquin,  Aspremont,  Fierabras,  Otinel,  Guy 
de  Bourgogne,  Prise  de  Pampelune,  Macaire,  Doon 
de  Mayence,  Guy  de  Nanteuil,  all  relating  the  ex- 
ploits  of  Charles  and  his  Paladins. 


44:  French  Literature. 


IV. 

THE  FABLIAUX  AND  THE  CHRONICLES. 

STUDENTS  of  folk-lore  have  shown  that  the 
"beast-fable"  is  a  common  inheritance  of  the 
Aryan  races ;  and  it  has  been  ascertained  that  it 
has  nowhere  reached  so  high  a  degree  of  poetical 
development  as  among  the  Franks.  They  handed 
down  this  taste  to  both  the  German  and  the  French 
branches  of  their  race. 

It  is  worthy  of  notice,  in  passing,  that  a  remark- 
ably similar  series  of  fables- has  existed  among  the 
descendents  of  the  Africans  brought  to  this  country 
as  slaves,  from  the  time  of  their  importation  to  the 
present  day.  The  children  of  our  country  are  now 
familiar  with  many  of  them  through  the  publica- 
tion of  Harris's  Uncle  Remus  ;  but  they  have  for 
generations  been  the  delight  of  the  young  people 
brought  up  on  our  Southern  plantations,  to  whom 
they  were  related  by  the  old  "  rnaumers  "  in  that 
rich  dialect  which  so  admirably  brought  out  their 
native  numor. 

Reynard  the  Fox  is  the  chief  of  these  stories,  as 
they  existed  among  the  Franks ;  and  it  seems  to 
have  first  appeared,  in  the  Latin  tongue,  in  the 
Netherlands.  These  Latin  poems  belong  to  the 
tenth  and  eleventh  centuries.  About  the  begin- 
ning of  the  twelfth  century  appeared  Isengrirnua, 
of  which  the  wolf  is  the  hero;  and,  a  little  later, 
Reinardus,  relating  the  rogueries  of  the  fox.  Both 
of  these  works  were  by  Flemish  ecclesiastics.  A 
little  later  still,  the  fable  passed  over  into  German 
literature. 

In  French  literature,  it  can  be  traced  back  only 
to  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century.  But  it 


TJt&   Fabliaux  and  the   Chronicles.  45 

soon  became  immensely  popular,  and  great  num- 
bers of  poems  were  devoted  to  the  adventures  of 
Reynard. 

Through  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries, 
it  formed  a  favorite  vehicle  for  satire  both  in  France 
and  Germany.  The  general  plan  of  all  these 
animal-epics  is  the  same.  Noble  the  Lion  is 
emperor  or  king,  with  his  court,  palace,  and  all  the 
insignia  of  royalty.  Keynard  the  Fox  is  a  crafty 
baron  dwelling  in  a  castle  called  Malpertuis. 
Isengrin  the  Wolf  is  his  uncle — an  uncle  upon 
whom  he  plays  off  malicious  tricks,  just  as  in  the 
comedies  scampish  nephews  were  wont  to  do. 
Their  wives  too  bear  names.  The  spouse  of 
Reynard  is  Emmeline,  that  of  Isengrin  is  Hersent. 
Church  and  State  are  both  satirized  in  these 
poems,  sometimes  merrily,  sometimes  bitterly  ;  and 
they  are  valuable  for  the  light  they  cast  on  the 
social  condition  of  the  people  in  the  middle  ages. 
They  are  mostly  written  in  verses  of  eight  sylla- 
bles, with  rhyming  couplets. 

These  "  beast-fables  "  belong  to  the  general  class 
called  Fabliaux.  This  term  comprehends  a  great 
variety  of  short  metrical  tales,  intended  for  recita- 
tion. They  were  often  of  the  nature  of  mock- 
heroics,  but  were  sometimes  serious.  One  of  the 
rnerry  ones,  the  Vilian  Mire,  furnished  Moliere  with 
the  plot  of  his  Hedecin  malgrZ  lui.  Others,  also 
ingenious  and  witty,  are  Saint  Pierre  et  le  Jongleur, 
the  Trois  Bossus,  and  the  Vair  Palefroi. 

The  story  of  this  last  runs  thus: — A  young 
knight,  courteous,  brave,  and  of  fine  person,  lacking 
money  but  possessing  an  excellent  horse  or  palfrey, 
has  for  neighbor  an  old  lord,  father  of  a  daughter 
of  great  beauty.  The  two  young  people  have  seen 
and  loved  each  other.  The  lover  in  vain  asks  for 
the  hand  of  the  lady.  The  father  is  polite,  but  in- 
timates that  the  aspirant's  estate  is  too  slender. 
The  lady  counsels  her  lover  to  apply  to  an  old  un- 
cle of  his,  to  whom  he  is  sole  heir,  for  aid  in  satis- 


46  French  Literature. 

fying  the  father.  The  uncle  promises,  but  woos  for 
himself,  and  is  accepted  by  the  father.  The  young 
lover,  returning  from  a  tournament,  learns  the 
treason  only  through  the  request  made  for  his 
beautiful  palfrey,  to  be  used  in  the  procession  which 
is  to  conduct  the  bride  to  the  chapel.  He  sends 
him,  in  spite  of  his  grief  and  anger.  Now,  the  pal- 
frey was  wanted  for  the  bride's  especial  use.  Dur- 
ing the  ride,  which  takes  place  before  day-dawn, 
the  palfrey  turns  down  a  familiar  path  in  the  forest, 
and  gallops  home  before  he  is  missed  from  the 
cavalcade.  A  chaplain  is  at  hand,  and  the  lovers 
are  united  before  the  two  old  men  find  their  way 
to  the  manor-house  of  the  young  knight.  The 
author  of  this  graceful  little  fabliau  is  Huon  le 
Roy. 

Other  abler  composers  of  fabliaux  and  contes  were 
Jean  de  Boves,  Henri  Piancelle,  and  Rutebeuf. 
The  taste  spread  to  other  lands ;  and  these  metrical 
tales  appeared,  sometimes  in  the  form  of  prose, 
sometimes  in  that  of  verse,  in  the  works  of  master- 
spirits. Boccaccio  in  his  Decameron,  and  Chaucer 
in  his  Canterbury  Tales,  drew  largely  from  these  old 
fabliaux. 

There  were  also  legends  of  miracles,  performed 
by  the  saints  and  especially  by  the  Virgin.  One  of 
these,  by  Gautier  de  Coinsy,  Prior  of  Yic-sur-Aisme, 
relates  how  the  Virgin  contended  and  conquered  in 
a  tourney  under  the  form  of  a  knight  who  had  been 
so  deeply  engaged  in  performing  his  orisons  in  one 
of  her  chapels  as  to  let  the  hour  of  combat  pass  by 
unobserved. 

During  this  period,  when  both  the  epic  lay  and 
the  mock-epic  fabliau  were  so  enthusiastically  cul- 
tivated, many  circumstances  concurred  to  extend 
and  ennoble  the  French  language.  The  Normans 
had  carried  it,  a  few  generations  before,  to  Sicily, 
Southern  Italy,  and  England.  The  Crusaders,  with 
leaders  like  Godfrey  of  BuiHon,  Robert  of  Nor- 
mandy, the  Sicilian  Normans,  Bohemond  and  Tan- 


The  Fabliau's  and  the   Chronicles.  47 

cred,  Hugh  ofVermandois,  Louis  Phillippe  Auguste 
of  France,  Richard  of  England,  Baldwin  of  Flanders, 
and  other  French-speaking  captains,  had  carried  it 
in  successive  generations  to  the  shores  of  the  Levant 
and  to  Jerusalem  itself. 

In  the  East  all  the  nations  of  the  West  came  to 
be  known  for  centuries  by  the  comprehensive  term 
of  Franks,  and  the  mixed  jargon  in  which  all  nego- 
tiations were  conducted  between  Christians  and 
Moslems  was  called  Lingua  Franca. 

While  Louis  IX. — Saint  Louis — was  conducting 
his  disastrous  crusades,  was  protecting  the  mendicant 
orders,  was  trying  in  every  way  to  bring  back  the 
spirit  of  his  age  to  the  ardors  and  the  simple  faith 
of  the  earlier  crusading  times,  the  great  love-alle- 
gory of  the  Middle  Ages  was  produced. 

Guilluame  of  Lorris  takes  a  vast  host  of  abstract 
qualities,  quickens  them  into  life  in  forms  like 
those  of  the  characters  that  Buiiyan  in  a  later  age 
peopled  his  Pilg rim's  Progress  with,  and  creates 
the  famous  Roman^de  la  Rose,  the  great  Book  of 
Love  for  the  centuries  just  before  the  Renaissance, 
as  Ovid's  Art  of  Love  had  been  for  former  genera- 
tions. The  work  of  Guilluame  of  Lorris  was  left 
unfinished,  and,  forty  years  later,  was  continued  in 
a  very  different  tone  by  Jean  of  Meung. 

But,  before  we  note  the  differences  which  the 
last  part  of  the  Roman  de  la  Rose,  when  compared 
with  the  first,  shows  between  the  spirit,  temper, 
and  motive  of  Jean  of  Meung  and  those  of  his  pre- 
decessor, it  will  be  necessary  to  mention  a  remark- 
able prose  work.  This  is  the  chronicle  of  the  Sire 
de  Joinville  (1222-1318),  who  accompanied  Saint 
Louis  in  the  first  of  his  expeditions,  knew  him 
thoroughly,  and  loved  him  as  man  and  as  master, 
lie  relates  the  exploits  of  his  king,  recites  his  con- 
versations and  opinions,  opens  to  us  fully  that  sin- 
gularly enthusiastic  nature — crowned  monk  and  yet 
valiant  knight.  He  does  not  concur  in  aJl  the 
views  of  his  master,  much  as  he  admires  him ;  and, 


48  French,  Literature. 

when  Louis  sets  out  on  his  second  crusade,  the 
good  seneschal  thinks  that  his  five  wounds  received 
at  Massora,  his  captivity  of  several  months,  all  that 
he  has  suffered  of  hunger,  thirst,  fever,  and  the 
plague,  will  honorably  excuse  him  from  the  new 
enterprise. 

This  chronicle  of  de  Joinville  has  great  merit  as 
a  picture  of  the  times  and  as  a  lifelike  portraiture 
of  one  of  the  most  singular  characters  in  history. 
There  are  in  it,  also,  vivid  descriptions  by  an  eye- 
witness of  most  dramatic  historical  scenes. 

We  hardly  leave  the  period  of  the  Crusades, 
when  we  find  France  greatly  changed.  Thought 
had  been  enlarged  by  freer  intercourse  with  Eome, 
by  contact  with  the  splendid  though  effete  civiliza- 
tion of  the  Byzantine  Empire,  by  a  nearer  acquain- 
tance with  the  then  brilliant  civilization  of  the 
Saracens,  by  the  return  of  travellers  from  the  mag- 
nificent empire  of  the  Mogul  Khans.  The  political 
and  social  situation  had  undergone  a  change  at 
home.  The  number  of  petty  fief's  had  been  greatly 
diminished  by  their  sale  or  merger  for  the  equip- 
ment of  the  barons  wh'o  had  gone  on  the  Crusades. 
The  great  lords  became  greater  than  ever,  and  held 
larger  courts.  The  towns  had  increased  their 
wealth  and  gained  greater  municipal  privileges. 

The  historian  of  Civilization  in  Europe,  Guizot, 
sums  up  the  results  of  the  Crusades  in  these  words : — 
"  On  the  one  hand,  the  extension  of  ideas  and  the 
emancipation  of  thought ;  on  the  other,  a  general 
enlargement  of  the  social  sphere,  and  the  opening 
of  a  wider  field  for  every  sort  of  activity:  they 
produced,  at  the  same  time,  more  individual  freedom 
and  more  political  unity.  They  tended  to  the 
independence  of  man  and  the  centralization  of 
society/' 

It  was  amid  this  new  order  of  society  that  Jean 
of  Meung  finished  the  poem  left  incomplete  by 
Guillaume  of  Lorris,  Le  Roman  de  la  Rose.  He 
did  so  at  the  invitation  of  his  king,  Philip  the 


The  Fabliaux  and  the  Chronicles.  49 

Fair,  that  prince  of  cunning  policy.  The  whole 
spirit  of  the  poem  was  changed  in  the  continuation. 
From  a  dreamy  and  metaphysical  allegory  of  love 
and  the  ladies,  it  became  a  vast  political  satire  and 
a  social  diatribe  as  well.  The  bitter  poet  scourges 
avarice,  idleness  and  hypocrisy,  having  an  especial 
grudge  against  those  pests  of  the  age,  the  mendi- 
cant monks,  "tramps"  in  the  name  of  religion. 

The  same  spirit  of  hostility  to  the  abuses  of  the 
Church,  clothed  in  the  same  form  of  allegory,  in 
which  all  the  personages  and  places  are  virtues  and 
vices,  is  exhibited  in  a  renovation  of  the  "beast- 
fable"  by  Jacquemart  Gelee.  This  fabliau  is  enti- 
tled Renart  le  Nouvel. 

Another  poet,  contemporary  with,  these,  Franqois 
of  Rues,  attacks  the  Pope  and  the  order  of  the 
Templars,  making  Fauvel  the  Mare  the  type  of 
luxury  and  ambition,  as  Gelee  had  made  Reynard 
the  Fox  the  type  of  bad  faith. 

At  this  time,  when  poetry  in  France  had  degen- 
erated into  violent. satire,  disfigured  by  the  uncouth 
forms  of  abstract  qualities  in  masquerade,  Italy 
was  moving  steadily  toward  a  brighter  light  of 
learning  than  the  old  dark  lantern  of  scholasticism 
could  furnish.  A  taste  had  sprung  up  for  the  study 
of  the  older  Latin  literature.  The  Civil  Law  of 
the  Roman  empire,  too,  had  been  eagerly  studied 
from  the  time  of  the  twelfth  century.  That  great 
Florentine  poet,  Dante  Alighieri,  had  produced  his 
Divina  Commedia.  There  was  an  awakening  be- 
yond the  Alps,  which  was  to  bear  fruit  later  all  over 
Europe. 

But  France  was  destined  to  pass  through  the 
throes  of  a  great  agony,  before  she  could  find  leisure 
to  profit  by  the  new  quickening  of  the  human 
mind.  She  had  now  to  meet  the  trials  of  the  Hun- 
dred Years'  "War.  These  long  wars  filled  up  the 
last  half  of  the  fourteenth  and  the  first  half  of  the 
fifteenth  centuries.  We  have  nothing  to  do  here 
with  those  shining  names,  Crecy,  Poitiers,  Azin- 
4 


50  French  Literature. 

court ;  with  the  gallant  knights,  Edward  the  Black 
Prince,  Sir  "Walter  de  Manny,  Gaston  de  Foix,  Ber- 
trand  du  Guesclin  ;  or  with  that  figure,  the  bright- 
est and  purest,  surely,  in  all  history,  Jeanne  Dare, 
the  Maid  of  Orleans.  Our  business  is  with  what 
came  after ;  for  this  time  of  convulsion  was  of  ne- 
cessity sterile  in  literary  effort,  except  for  two  wit- 
nesses of  phases  of  the  struggle  and  to  some  ex- 
tent partakers  in  it,  Jean  Froissart  the  chronicler, 
and  Eustache  Deschamps  the  poet. 

Froissart,  the  son  of  a  painter  of  escutcheons,  was 
born  at  Valenciennes  in  1337.  He  was  destined 
for  tke  Church,  and  so  received  a  better  education 
than  the  knights  and  princes  with  whom  he  after- 
wards lived  so  much.  His  passion  for  poetry,  for 
courtly  society,  for  knightly  deeds,  took  him  to 
other  lands,  after  inciting  him  to  relate  such  events 
of  the  wars  of  his  time  as  he  could  find  material 
for.  On  finishing  the  first  part  of  his  Chronicles, 
which  he  began  when  only  twenty  years  of  age,  he 
went  to  the  brilliant  court  of  Edward  III.  of  Eng- 
land, where  he  became  a  great  favorite  with  the 
Queen,  Philippa  of  Hainault,  who  made  him  her 
secretary.  He  also  visited  Scotland,  as  the  guest 
of  King  David  Bruce.  In  1366,  he  went  with  the 
Black  Prince  to  Bordeaux.  Later,  he  accompanied 
the  Duke  of  Clarence  to  Italy;  and,  there,  it  is  be- 
lieved that  he  had  Chaucer  and  Petrarca  for  fellow- 
guests  at  the  marriage  of  the  duke  with  the  daugh- 
ter of  Galeazzo  Visconti,  Duke  of  Milan.  On 
Philippa's  death,  Froissart  left  England.  He  was 
afterwards  private  secretary  to  the  Duke  of  Bra- 
bant, on  whose  death  he  p ntered  the  service  of  Guy, 
Count  of  Blois,  and,  continuing  his  Chronicles, 
made  a  journey  to  the  court  of  Gaston  Phoebus, 
Count  de  Foix,  to  hear  from  the  Bearnese  and  Gas- 
con knights  the  tales  of  their  feats  during  the 
great  wars.  He  made  other  journeys,  especially  a 
visit  to  the  English  court  of  Richard  II.,  where  he 
was  nobly  welcomed.  He  died  in  1410  at  Chimay, 


The  Fabliaux  and  the   Chronicles.  51 

where  he  held  a  canonry.  He  was  certainly  a  born 
narrator,  and  cannot  be  surpassed  for  ease,  unaf- 
fected simplicity,  warmth  and  variety  of  coloring. 

"  In  certain  narratives  of  battle,"  says  Villemain, 
"  Froissart  is  truly  Homeric.  One  could  not  describe 
with  greater  force  the  shock  of  those  masses  of  mail-clad 
men  that  dash  together.  Arrived  in  the  castle  of  Gaston 
de  Foix,  you  see  there  in  life-like  colors  the  life  of  leis- 
ure, the  dainty  delights,  the  festivals:  they  could  not  be 
painted  with  more  grace.  Pass  with  the  Chronicler  into 
Spain  :  the  boldness  of  Henry  of  Transtamare,  the  gen- 
ius of  the  Black  Prince  are  before  you.  Come  back  with 
him  to  France :  the  wisdom  of  Charles  V.,  his  activity, 
his  able  and  restorative  administration,  are  described 
with  a  care  and  a  seriousness  which  seem  for  a  time  to  set 
aside  the  natural  gaiety  of  Froissart.  Great  events, 
familiar  anecdotes,  characteristics  of  different  nations, 
English,  Flemings,  French — all  are  mingled  and  succeed 
one  another  without  confusion  ;  and  never  are  the  colors 
of  the  historian  alike,  though  he  is  always  unaffected, 
natural,  full  of  his  stibject." 

His  Chronicles  were,  in  the  next  age,  continued 
by  Monstrelet,  but  in  very  inferior  style. 

As  to  the  part  taken  by  Froissart,  one  in  these 
days  is  apt  to  imagine,  simply  because  he  spoke 
and  wrote  in  French,  that  he  was  unpatriotic  in 
showing  more  decided  sympathy  in  the  great 
struggle  with  the  kings  and  nobles  of  England  than 
with  those  of  France.  But,  it  must  be  remembered, 
that  those  kings  were  of  the  house  of  Anjou,  spoke 
French,  and  laid  claim  to  the  throne  of  France, 
having  in  their  veins  fully  as  much  of  the  French 
blood-rojal  as  any  prince  of  the  house  of  Valois; 
that  those  barons  of  England  were  of  Norman  and 
Aquitanian  descent ;  that  the  English  queen,  who 
protected  and  rewarded  Froissart,  was  like  himself 
a  Fleming,  as  Hainault  was  then  subject  to  Flan- 
ders;  and  that  the  Angevin  princes  ruled  by  just 
right  of  inheritance  nianv  fair  lauds  in  which  French 


52  French  Literature. 

was  the  native  tongue,  and  were  followed  to  battle 
by  many  French  knights.  The  struggle  was  at 
first  a  struggle  of  dynasties,  and  not  of  nationalities. 
It  was  not  till  the  time  of  Henry  V.  that  it  could 
be  called  a  conflict  between  England  and  France. 

But  Froissart  was  to  the  men  of  his  own  day 
something  more  than  a  chronicler.  He  was  also  a 
poet,  and  a  voluminous  one.  He  tells  the  story  of 
his  youthful  love,  which  was  a  devotion  after  the 
manner  of  the  Provengal  poets,  in  a  lay  of  some 
four  thousand  lines,  interspersed  with  ballades 
virelays,  and  rondeaux.  The  poem  is  styled  Trettie 
de  TEspinette  Amoureuse,  and  is  full  of  all  manner 
of  prettinesses.  But  unreal  as  it  all  is,  there  is  in 
it  the  noble  ideal  of  faith  in  honor,  virtue,  loyalty— 
the  belief  in  love  as  the  great  elevator  and  purifier. 
So,  in  the  great  chronicler,  we  find  also  one  of  the 
last  of  the  Trouveres,  or  even  of  the  Troubadours, 
for  both  theme  and  treatment  are  more  in  their 
mood  than  in  that  of  the  poets  of  the  North. 

There  was  another  poet  of  this  age,  who  has 
come  down  to  us  with  that  title,  and  whose  mission 
it  was  to  sing  of  those  events  which  Froissart  chroni- 
cled. This  was  Eustache  Deschamps,  soldier  and 
magistrate,  and  hater  of  the  English.  His  verse  has 
many  tones,  serious,  lofty,  tender,  satirical.  It  has 
also  the  varying  forms  of  ballade,  rondeau,  lay. 

It  was  in  this  age,  too,  when  war  was  desolating 
the  land  and  was  aided  in  its  dread  task  by  the 
plague  called  the  Black  Death  and  by  the  frightful 
atrocities  of  that  rising  of  the  peasants  called  the 
Jacquerie,  that  as  a  singular  contrast  the  table-song 
and  the  vaudeville  came  first  into  being.  Olivier 
Basselin  improvised  such  songs  for  the  Norman 
wine-bibbers  two  centuries  before  they  appeared  in 
print,  modernized  somewhat  in  language,  but  with 
the  same  thoughts  and  the  same  rhythm.  There  is 
a  fine  lyrical  swing  about  them,  which  has  given 
them  vitality,  and  has  caused  their  rhythm  to  be 
reproduced  in  many  a  modern  chant.  This  old 


The  Fabliaux  and  the  Chronicles.  58 

singir  of  drinking-songs,  Olivier  Basselin,  was  not 
only  the  father  of  the  modern  vaudeville,  but  that 
species  of  composition  actually  takes  its  name  from 
him — that  is,  from  the  name  of  the  region  where 
he  composed  his  songs,  the  Valley  of  the  Vire,  for 
the  vaudeville  was  originally  called  Vau-de-  Vire. 

Under  Charles  V.  of  France,  who  encouraged  the 
study  of  the  classics,  there  were  three  authors 
deserving  at  least  brief  mention.  These  were 
Christine  de  Pisan,  one  of  the  most  learned  women 
of  her  age;  Jean  Gerson,  the  ecclesiastic  once 
believed  to  have  been  the  true  Thomas  a  Kempis; 
and  Alain  Char  tier,  poet  and  patriot. 

Christine  wrote  the  life  of  Charles  V.,  under  the 
title,  Livre  des  fails  et  bonnes  moeurs  du  roi  Charles 
V.  Gerson,  besides  a  vast  number  of  Latin  works 
which  he  composed  in  his  numerous  controversies, 
wrote  in  French  some  strong  remonstrances  to 
King  Charles  in  behalf  of  the  University,  of  which 
he  was  Chancellor.  Alain  Chartier,  a  short  time 
after  the  fatal  battle  of  Agincourt,  wrote  his  Livre 
des  quatre  Dames,  a  poem  in  which  he  takes  occa- 
sion to  reproach  those  who  fled  from  that  lost  field. 
His  most  striking  work  is  his  Quadriloye  invectif^ 
a  patriatic  manifesto,  put  forth  between  the  defeat 
at  Agincourt  and  the  deliverance  of  Orleans  by  the 
Maiden.  It  is  a  noble  appeal,  full  of  hope  and  en- 
couragement. It  was  Jeanne  Dare  who  answered 
it  in  the  name  of  France  and  of  the  God,  who,  as  she 
firmly  believed,  sent  her  to  lead  the  armies  of 
France ;  and,  though  she  perished  herself,  she  saved 
her  beloved  France. 

The  old  lays  of  exploits  had  now  passed  away 
with  the  decay  of  chivalry.  The  latest  of  them 
were  two  poems,  one  of  them  reciting  the  adven- 
tures of  a  purely  imaginary  hero,  Baldwin  of 
Sebourg,  whom  the  Trouvere  invents  as  a  scion  of 
the  house  of  the  Counts  of  Flanders ;  the  other, 
written  by  Cuvelier,  a  short  time  after  the  death  of 


54:  French  Literature. 

Du  Guesclin,  and  narrating  the  history  of  that 
Breton  hero. 

A  little  later,  we  find  the  heroic  lays  transformed 
into  prose  romances,  and  the  fabliaux  into  prose 
novels.  Among  these  latter  was  the  famous  col- 
lection, called  the  Cent  Nouvelles  nouvelles,  some 
tales  of  which — and  these  among  the  most  licentious 
— are  ascribed  to  the  Dauphin,  who  afterwards 
mounted  the  throne  as  Louis  XI. 

But  the  most  remarkable  literary  productions, 
perhaps,  of  this  age  were  the  fiery  sermons  of  the 
popular  preachers,  Olivier  Maillard  and  Michel 
Menot,  both  of  them  Franciscan  friars.  They  used 
familiar  comparisons,  popular  proverbs,  piquant  al- 
lusions to  passing  events,  biting  personalities,  satir- 
ical anecdotes  and  fables;  apostrophized  with  with- 
ering irony  and  startling  vehemence  great  Church 
dignitaries;  attacked  the  great  lords  and  ladies; 
and  even  rebuked  the  king. 

Besides  this  dramatic  preaching,  stirring  the  peo- 
ple to  repentance — Wickliffe  in  England  and  IIuss 
in  Bohemia  had  just  preceded  Menot  and  Maillard, 
and  Savonarola  in  Italy  was  their  contemporary — 
the  Church  was  authorizing  at  this  time  the  per- 
formance of  those  Mystery  and  Miracle  plays,  of 
which  in  our  times  the  Ober-Ammergau  Passion- 
play  is  a  solitary  survival. 

A  celebrated  fraternity,  called  the  Confrerie  de 
la  Passion,  founded  in  Paris  in  1350,  had  the  mo- 
nopoly for  the  performance  of  these.  They  were 
very  long  and  occupied,  each  of  them,  several 
days.  The  most  celebrated  of  them,  the  Mystery 
of  the  Passion,  contains  more  than  sixty  thousand 
verses,  and  its  representation  took  up  several  weeks. 
The  brothers  Grebau  and  Jean  Michel  of  Angers 
were  the  most  notable  composers  of  these  religious 
dramas. 

Serious  at  first,  these  performances  after  a  time 
degenerated  ;  and  farce  and  ribaldry  were  mingled 
with  them,  until  by  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 


The  Fabliaux  and  the   Chronicles.  55 

century  they  fell  into  great  disrepute.  They  were 
at  last  prohibited,  as  a  public  scandal,  by  the  Parle- 
ment  of  Paris  in  1548. 

Meanwhile,  however,  that  taste  for  allegory,  which 
had  shown  itself  so  prodigally  in  the  Romance  of 
the  Rose,  also  ventured  upon  the  stage,  and  the  en- 
tertainment given  by  the  Mystery  Plays  was  some- 
times varied  by  the  performance  of  Morality  Plays, 
in  which  the  virtues  and  vices  took  the  place  of  the 
Biblical  characters. 

The  fabliaux  also  invaded  the  stage,  being  there 
transformed  into  farces,  very  licentious  for  the  most 
part.  Some  that  were  comparatively  free  from  such 
grossnesses  as  disfigured  the  majority,  were  still 
immoral  in  their  tone,  as  setting  forth  the  triumph 
of  roguery.  They  are,  however,  amusing ;  and  the 
most  famous  of  them,  Maitre  Pathelin,  is  really  a 
masterpiece  of  its  kind. 

Besides  this  purely  popular  literature,  we  find  on 
the  eve  of  the  Renaissance  three  writers  of  greater 
literary  pretensions,  one  of  them,  however,  as  pop- 
ular as  the  preachers  and  the  composers  of  Mystery 
Plays.  Fran9ois  Villon  is  the  immediate  successor 
of  the  author  of  Pathelin.  Charles  d'Orldans  is 
the  representative  of  the  old  poetry  of  chivalry. 
Phillippe  de  Comines  is  the  real  successor  of  Frois- 
sart,  whose  spirit  Monstrelet  could  not  reproduce. 

Charles  d'Orle'ans,  the  near  kinsmen  of  Louis 
XI.,  and  himself  the  father  of  a  king,  though  cru- 
elly used  by  that  wily  and  wicked  prince  who  is  so 
vividly  painted  for  us  in  the  Quentin  Dumvard  of 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  is  an  isolated  flower  of  tender 
and  exalted  sentiment.  He  does  not  belong  to  his 
age,  but  to  the  elder  times,  and  he  is  in  his  nature 
almost  a  twin- brother  of  that  good  King  Eene,  the 
last  of  the  independent  Dukes  of  Anjou  and  the 
last  of  the  Proven9al  poets,  whom  Scott  describes 
for  us  in  his  Au^e  of  Geierstein.  Indeed,  these 
princes  resemble  each  other,  not  only  in  their  pas- 
sion for  poetry  an<l  for  the  chivalry  of  olden  time, 


56  French  Literature. 

but  also  in  their  unfitness  to  cope  with  the  power- 
ful and  unscrupulous  princes  of  the  age.  They 
would  both  have  made  excellent  troubadours ;  but 
the  times  were  not  willing  to  listen  to  troubadours. 

In  exile  and  in  prison,  as  well  as  in  his  castle  of 
Blois,  Charles  poured  forth  gay  rondeaux,  dainty 
little  ballades,  charming  triolets.  The  sweet  season 
of  spring  reigns  over  all  his  poetry,  and  he  .never 
seems  to  grow  old.  Retiring  to  his  castle  of  Blois, 
after  his  return  from  captivity,  he  founded  there  a 
little  court  of  the  Muses,  and  gathered  around  him 
poets  and  wits  who  took  part  in  poetical  tourneys. 
Here  the  last  of  the  troubadours  entertains  the  first 
of  the  Bohemians,  for  Villon,  whose  real  name  was 
Fran9ois  Corbueil,  fresh  from  a  prison,  came  to  one 
of  these  tourneys,  and  carried  off  the  palm  of 
victory. 

Yillon,  though  a  thorough  scamp,  fit  to  be  the 
pet  of  Louis  XL,  along  with  his  hangman  and  his 
barber,  was  after  all  a  true  poet,  energetic,  sincere, 
and  endowed  with  lively  imagination,  sensibility, 
and  wit.  Narrowly  missing  the  gallows,  his  most 
touching  verses  are  those  in  which  he  treats  of 
death,  the  fatal  eclipse  of  all  the  beauty  and  the 
grandeur  that  song  and  story  proclaim  as  brighten- 
ing the  ages  that  have  gone  by.  His  poems  have 
been  ably  translated  by  John  Payne. 

De  Comines,  the  last  of  the  chroniclers  and  at 
the  same  time  the  first  of  the  historians,  was  also 
befriended  by  Louis  XL,  to  whom  he  voluntarily 
attached  himself,  though  at  first  in  the  service  of 
Charles  the  Bold,  of  Burgundy,  Louis's  great  rival. 
In  his  Memoires,  besides  describing  with  subtle  dis- 
crimination and  narrating  events  with  admirable 
lucidity,  he  seeks  to  ascertain  causes  and  effects 
with  a  political  sagacity  till  then  unknown  among 
the  writers  of  the  Middle  Ages.  He  has,  too,  the 
valuable  quality  of  the  impartial  witness.  Mod- 
eration and  good  sense  characterize  him  through- 
out, and  they  are  rare  gifts  in  one"  who  writes  the 


The  Fabliaux  and  the   Chronicles.  67 

history  of  his  own  times.  Guizot  says  of  Philippe 
de  Comines :  "As  a  king's  adviser,  he  would  have 
been  as  much  in  place  at  the  side  of  Louis  XI Y. 
as  at  that  of  Louis  XI. ;  as  a  writer,  he,  in  the  fif- 
teenth century,  often  made  history  and  politics 
speak  a  language  which  the  seventeenth  century 
would  not  have  disowned." 


58  French  Literature. 


V. 

THE  RENAISSANCE. 

WE  have  reached  the  Renaissance — the  period 
of  the  re-birth  of  the  human  mind  after  the  torpor, 
which  was  like  death,  that  the  unfruitful  philoso- 
phy of  scholasticism  had  imposed  upon  it.  The 
human  mind  was  astir  once  more.  What  were 
the  causes  of  this  new  life  ? 

I  think  they  were  nearly  all  traceable  to  the  fall 
of  Constantinople  in  1453,  viewed  by  Christian 
Europe,  at  the  time  and  for  ages  after,  as  the  great- 
est of  disasters.  It  is  true,  that  what  the  Europe- 
ans had  learned  from  the  East  during  the  crusading 
centuries  had  developed  changes  of  great  impor- 
tance which  prepared  the  soil,  as  it  were,  for  those 
seeds  which  were  to  be  sowed  by  the  coming  of  the 
Turks  into  Europe.  The  Crusades  had  brought 
the  Western  Europeans  into  contact  with  two  civ- 
ilizations more  advanced  than  their  own,  the  By- 
zantine and  the  Saracenic.  Their  minds  had  been 
greatly  enlightened  and  liberalized.  A  public  so- 
cial opinion  had  been  generated  by  the  mingling 
of  the  different  nations  in  the  prosecution  of  a 
common  cause.  Commerce  had  been  developed  on 
a  larger  scale  than  ever  before.  Gunpowder  had 
come  into  use,  and  was  gradually  changing  the 
methods  of  warfare  and  diminishing  the  impor- 
tance of  mail-clad  cavalry.  Printing  had  been 
invented  just  before  the  fall  of  Constantinople,  and 
was  ready  to  disseminate  the  new  learning  widely — 
almost,  it  may  be  said,  at  the  very  moment  when 
it  began  to  be  eagerly  sought  by  the  newly  awak- 
ened minds  of  men.  The  arts  that  minister  to  the 
taste  for  the  beautiful  had  also  begun  to  be  culti- 


The  Renaissance.  59 

vated  with  new  zeal  in  Italy,  fostered  ty  the  pe- 
culiar circumstances  of  those  little  city-common- 
wealths that  had  sprung  up  tliere.  Painting  in  oil 
was  invented,  and  great  masterpieces  were  produced. 
Engraving  on  copper  was  invented,  and  multiplied 
copies  of  these  great  works.  The  mariner's  com- 
pass was  invented,  and  gave  new  possibilities  to 
commerce. 

Then  came  the  fall  of  Constantinople,  which 
furnished  new  opportunities  for  utilizing  these  dis- 
coveries. Cutting  off  the  merchant  ships  of  Yen- 
ice  and  Genoa  from  the  Levant,  it  forced  them  to 
seek  the  East  by  a  new  route.  This  gave  rise  to 
the  Portuguese  navigation  of  the  seas  around  Af- 
rica and  their  finding  a  new  passage  to  India.  It 
gave  rise  to  the  discovery  of  the  Antilles  and  then 
of  the  great  American  continent  by  the  faith  and 
enterprise  of  that  noble  Genoese  seaman,  Colum- 
bus, in  ships  of  Spain. 

The  downfall  of  the  Byzantine  Empire  also 
drove  great  numbers  of  fugitive  Greeks  into  Italy, 
and  among  them  scholars,  who  brought  with  them 
valuable  manuscripts  and  the  ability  to  reveal  their 
contents  to  the  eager  scholars  of  the  West.  Learn- 
ing took  a  wider  range  and  a  loftier  tone.  The 
Western  mind  awoke.  Thought  and  action  were 
both  possible  on  a  larger  scale  than  heretofore. 
The  material  for  both  was  immensely  increased. 
The  old  struggle  against  the  abuses  which  had 
sprung  up  in  the  Church  was  renewed,  and,  this 
time,  with  success  in  the  northern  parts  of  Europe. 
That  movement,  called  the  Reform,  which  had  been 
crushed  successively  in  the  case  of  the  Albigenses, 
of  the  followers  of  John  Huss  and  Jerome  of 
Prague,  and  of  the  Lollard  followers  of  Wickliffe, 
reached  maturity  now  under  the  leadership  of 
Luther,  of  Zwingli,  of  Calvin,  of  Knox.  It  had 
its  influence  in  France,  but  it  failed  to  win  over  the 
nation,  and  it  did  not  seriously  affect  the  literature. 

Among  those  who  listened  willingly  to  the  doc- 


60  French  Literature. 

trines  of  the  Keformers  was  the  poet,  Clement 
Marot,  the  son  of  Jean  Marot,  himself  a  poet  of 
some  note,  and  favored  by  both  Louis  XII.  and 
Frangois  I. 

Marot's  joyous  nature  was  in  perpetual  contrast 
with  his  life,  for  that  was  one  continued  struggle 
against  the  machinations  of  his  enemies.  It  was 
in  vain  that  he  was  befriended  by  Marguerite  de 
Valois,  the  king's  sister,  and  by  some  of  the  fore- 
most scholars  of  the  age,  among  them  the  bold  Rab- 
elais. The  hatred  of  Diane  de  Poitiers  and  of  the 
inquisitor  of  the  Sorbonne,  Jean  Bouchard,  was  too 
bitter  to  be  stayed  even  by  the  favor  of  the  king. 
The  poor  poet  had  to  suffer  imprisonment,  exile, 
and  misery  everywhere  save  in  the  heart. 

Marot  was  a  true  poet  of  the  Renaissance.  He 
attempted  many  kinds  of  poetry,  and  in  some  styles 
he  has  never  been  surpassed.  His  epigrams,  his 
rondeaux,  his  madrigals,  his  light  and  mirthful 
epistles,  have  all  the  grace,  the  wit  and  the  charm 
that  such  compositions  sliould  sparkle  with.  But 
he  fails  when  he  attempts  a  loftier  strain.  Could 
we  fancy  the  throbbing  jewel  that  flits  from  flower 
to  flower  in  our  gardens  endowed  with  the  joyous 
matin  song  of  the  mocking-bird,  such  a  creature  of 
quick  beauty  and  thrilling  rapture  would  be  a  fit 
emblem  of  the  singer  Marot.  But  he  does  not 
soar  on  eagle  wing  straight  in  the  eye  of  the  sun. 

His  little  gems  are  numerous.  There  are  the 
ballade  of  Frere  Lubm,  the  rondeaux  of  the  Bon 
vieux  temps,  the  madrigals  on  La  Meprise  de 
V amour  and  on  Le  Passer eau,  the  epigrams  of 
Lieutenant  Maillart,  L'Abbe  et  son  valet,  and  Le 
gros  prieur,  and  his  epistle  to  King  Francis  after 
having  been  robbed  by  his  valet.  In  these  he  has 
much  the  spirit  of  Catullus,  and  indeed  in  many  of 
his  lighter  pieces  he  directly  imitates  that  charm- 
ing poet.  He  has  merit,  too,  in  his  satires,  apo- 
logues, and  elegies.  His  hymns,  like  the  devo- 
tional work  of  Queen  Marguerite,  Miroir  de 


The  Renaissance.  61 

Pecheresse,  as  compared  with  her  Heptameron  des 
Nouvelles,  lacked  the  fire  and  rhythmic  ease  of  his 
profane  productions. 

Another  Huguenot,  and  a  most  steadfast  one, 
was  Bernard  Palissy,  the  famous  artist  in  pottery. 
The  story  of  his  lifelong  devotion  to  his  art,  of  his 
persevering  experiments  and  final  brilliant  success, 
of  his  favor  with  the  king  and  his  special  exemp- 
tion from  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew's  Day 
because  such  a  man  could  not  be  replaced,  and  of 
his  brave  defiance  in  prison  of  every  temptation  to 
abjure  his  faith,  is  a  story  very  generally  known. 
But  it  is  not  so  well  known,  that  the  memoirs  he 
wrote  not  only  indicate  a  true  method  in  the 
study  of  physical  science,  but  are  regarded  by  crit- 
ics as  admirable  from  a  literary  point  of  view. 

Fraugois  Kabelais,  Marot's  friend,  with  a  richer 
vein  of  satire  had  greater  skill  in  veiling  his  real 
opinions,  and  succeeded  in  escaping  persecution. 
Indeed,  it  was  not  easy  to  persecute  one  who  had 
made  all  the  world,  laugh.  The  filth  with  which 
he  riotously,  and  seemingly  with  hearty  enjoy- 
ment, covers  up  the  hands  that  point  so  jeeringly 
at  the  follies  and  disgraces  of  his  time,  is  apt  to 
disgust  us  of  this  nicer  age  so  completely  that  we 
fail  to  note  his  unerring  vision  as  he  marks  the 
proper  objects  of  scorn  and  pitiless  ridicule.  We 
should  remember  that  but  for  that  lavish  license  in 
the  nastiness  that  delighted  those  whom  he  satirized, 
he  would  most  likely  have  gone  to  the  stake,  or,  at 
all  events,  into  exile.  In  truth,  he  had  not  the 
martyr-spirit  any  more  than  had  Erasmus;  and, 
yet,  like  Erasmus,  he  seems  to  have  ardently  de- 
sired to  laugh  the  lazy  monks  out  of  their  too  com- 
fortable nooks.  Setting  aside  the  sullied  garment 
that  clothes  his  thought,  we  find  the  meaning  of 
the  great  Pantagruelist  sincere  and  serious;  and 
sometimes  even  his  mirth,  so  often  stained,  is 
clean  as  well  as  hearty.  His  satire,  like  that  of 
Swift  in  his  Gulliver ,  is  a  universal  one.  From 


62  French  Literature, 

the  king  and  court,  the  magistracy,  the  clergy,  the 
cloisters,  to  the  lower  functionaries  and  the  popu- 
lace, his  satire  embraces  all.  Learning,  wit,  and 
true  social  and  political  wisdom  shine  under  all 
that  mass  of  filth,  with  which  the  long  allegory  of 
Gargantua  and  Pantagruel  is  daubed.  There  are 
diamonds  in  the  dungheap,  if  one  can  bear  to  turn 
it  over  for  them.  Good  sense  on  the  subject  of 
education,  a  large  conception  of  the  benefits  attend- 
ant on  the  new  learning,  a  creed  of  charity  and  lib- 
erality of  spirit  far  in  advance  of  the  age,  are  some 
of  the  excellent  things  to  be  found  in  the  midst  of 
sarcasms  and  drolleries.  In  many  ways  he  seems 
a  forefather  of  Voltaire,  in  his  faults  and  in  his 
virtues.  But,  though  coarser,  he  is  merrier  and 
less  sardonic  than  the  philosopher  of  Ferney.  His 
great  misfortune  was  that  he  never  seems  to  have 
known  a  woman. 

A  notable  contrast  in  temper,  style,  and  matter 
to  the  writings  of  Rabelais  were  the  controversial 
pamphlets  and  the  great  theological  treatise,  Insti- 
tution chretienne,  of  Calvin,  the  French  Reformer 
who  became  the  Genevese  legislator.  His  prose  is 
ranked  very  high  for  firm,  clear,  virile  energy  by 
French  critics  who  dissent  from  his  creed  and  abhor 
his  spirit. 

The  taste  of  King  Fra^ois  for  the  romances  of 
chivalry  was  reflected  by  a  writer,  who,  according 
to  Philarete  Chasles,  exerted  no  mean  influence 
on  the  development  of  French  prose.  This  was 
Herberay  des  Essarts,  who  translated  from  the 
Spanish  that  famous  Amadis  de  Gaule,  of  which 
Don  Quixote  was  so  fond,  and  which  the  French 
king  pored  over  in  his  prison  at  Madrid. 

To  these,  the  poet,  the  experimenter,  the  satirist, 
the  theologian,  and  the  translator,  must  be  added 
the  Queen  of  Navarre  ;  her  valet  de  chambre,  Bona- 
venture  des  Perriers,  author  of  the  Joyeux  Devis 
and  of  the  Cymbalum  mundi ;  Calvin's  friend  and 
follower,  Theodore  de  Beze  ;  Marot's  imitator,  Bro- 


The  Renaissance.  63 

deau:  and   the    epigrammatist,    Mellin    de   Saint- 
Gelais. 

Marguerite  I  have  already  alluded  to.  She  was 
daughter  to  Charles  of  Orleans,  Comte  d'Angou- 
leme,  and  was  in  her  youth  known  as  Marguerite 
d'Angouleme.  She  was  versed  in  Latin,  Greek,  and 
Hebrew,  as  well  as  in  Spanish  and  Italian,  and  was 
of  brilliant  mind.  Married  first  to  Charles,  Due 
d'Alenc.on,  she  was,  on  his  death,  given  in  marriage 
to  Henri  d' Albret,  King  of  Navarre,  becoming  thus 
the  mother  of  Jeanne  d' Albret  and  the  grandmother 
of  Henri  IV.  She  was  a  loving  sister,  and  had 
gone  to  Madrid,  when  her  brother  was  a  prisoner 
there,  to  nurse  him  in  his  sickness.  As  Queen  of 
Navarre,  she  did  what  she  could  to  foil  the  persecut- 
ing rage  of  the  monks,  though  the  threats  against 
her  own  life  induced  her  to  conform  outwardly  to 
t'ue  practices  of  the  church  of  Rome.  She  was  born 
in  the  year  in  which  Columbus  discovered  America, 
and  died  in  the  year  in  which  Du  Bellay  published 
his  Illustration  de  Id  Langrte  fran$aise.  This  period, 
from  1492  to  1549,  covered  by  her  life,  may  well  be 
regarded  as  the  first  period  of  the  Renaissance. 

Du  Bellay's  work  marks  the  beginning  of  a  pe- 
riod in  which  the  influence  of  the  old  classics  domi- 
nated with  really  tyrannical  sway,  culminating  in 
the  artificialities  of  Ronsard.  Du  Bellay,  filled  with 
a  high  enthusiasm  for  the  sinewy  strength  and  pol- 
ished grace  of  the  best  writers  of  antiquity,  strove 
to  open  the  eyes  of  his  contemporaries  to  the  weak- 
nesses of  their  earlier  writers,  and  to  animate  them 
to  an  earnest  effort  towards  the  attainment  of  true 
excellence.  His  treatise  was  eloquent ;  and,  had 
Ronsard,  BaiT,  Belleau,  and  the  other  young  pupils 
of  the  learned  Jean  Daurat,  carried  out  his  counsels 
with  judgment,  the  Renaissance  might  have  pro- 
duced far  more  valuable  fruit.  Du  Bellay's  own 
work  was  healthy,  and  in  no  degree  over-strained. 
He  was  called  the  French  Ovid  ;  and,  had  he  lived 
longer — for  he  died  at  thirty-six — he  would  perhapa 


64  French  Literature. 

have  deserved  such  praise.  His  poetry  is  delicate, 
tender,  and  full  of  sensibility.  In  one  of  his  son- 
nets, he  breathes  sweetly  that  love  of  the  natal 
place,  which  calls  forth  the  sympathy  of  all  who, 
like  him,  are  forced  to  pass  a  large  part  of  life  far 
from  the  home  of  their  childhood.  Singing  his 
plaint  in  Eome,  whither  his  kinsman,  the  Cardinal 
du  Bellay,  had  taken  him,  he  declares  that  his  own 
Loire  pleases  him  more  than  the  Latin  Tiber;  his 
little  Angevin  village,  Lire,  more  than  Mount  Pala- 
tine. There  is  also,  among  his  poems,  a  light  and 
graceful  little  villanelle,  addressed  to  the  breezes, 
and  put  into  the  mouth  of  a  winnower  of  wheat, 
which  has  been  often  quoted  as  a  model  of  grace. 

Pierre  de  Konsard,  who  was  in  far  greater  estima- 
tion in  his  own  day  than  Joachim  du  Bellay,  sinned 
by  the  exaggeration  of  that  spirit  of  imitation  which 
the  study  of  antiquity  induced.  For  a  half-century 
he  had  the  reputation  of  combining  in  his  own  per- 
son the  excellences  of  Homer  and  Virgil,  of  Pindar 
and  Horace.  Montaigne  admired  him ;  Tasso  did 
him  honor;  those  bitter  enemies,  Elizabeth  of 
England  and  Mary  Stuart,  agreed  in  bowing  down 
before  the  glory  of  the  great  French  poet.  Indeed, 
connected  with  the  court  at  an  early  age  on  account 
of  the  favor  which  his  beauty  and  accomplishments 
won  for  him,  he  had  lived  at  both  the  Scottish  and 
the  English  courts,  as  well  as  the  French,  before 
these  princesses  were  born.  It  was  deafness  that 
led  him  to  renounce  the  career  of  arms  for  that  of 
letters.  Going  to  the  College  de  Coqueret,  he  stud- 
ied hard  there  for  five  years.  There,  with  his  fel- 
low-student, Du  Bellay,  and  others  of  like  mind,  he 
planned  to  reform  his  native  language  and  invest  it 
with  the  dignity  and  grace  of  the  classics.  Du  Bel- 
lay,  as  has  been  seen,  struck  the  first  blow  ;  but  it 
was  Ronsard  who  most  boldly  broke  with  the  past, 
and  most  resolutely  set  to  work  to  polish  the  old 
materials  for  a  new  style  of  literary  architecture, 
inserting  freely  stones  of  classic  carving,  in  the  be- 


The  Renaissance.  65 

lief  that  they  must  be  more  ornamental  than  what 
they  displaced.  The  year  after  Du  Bellay's  mani- 
festo, appeared  Ronsard's  Amours  and  Quatre  Livres 
tf  Odes. 

The  advocates  of  the  new  school  hailed  these 
poems  with  delight.  The  court  declared  itself  on 
his  side.  Pensions  and  honors  were  showered  upon 
him.  Rabelais  raised  almost  the  only  strong  voice 
on  the  other  side.  Ronsard  was  carried  away  by 
the  applause  lavished  on  him.  Twenty  days  after 
the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew's  Day — which  he 
approved,  for  he  was  a  bitter  partisan — he  pub- 
lished his  unfinished  epic,  La  Franqiade,  a  very 
poor  imitation  of  the  ^Eneid.  He  finished  only 
four  books  out  of  the  intended  twenty-four;  but  for 
these  he  was  extolled  to  the  skies.  Charles  IX. 
gave  him  the  abbeys  of  Croix-val  and  Bellozane 
and  the  priories  of  Saint-Cosme  and  Evailles.  At 
the  abbey  of  Croix-val,  whither  he  had  retired  to 
end  his  days,  he  received  from  the  imprisoned  Mary 
of  Scotland  a  set  at'  plate  worth  2000  crowns,  with 
the  inscription :  A  Ronsard,  I1  Apollon  de  la  Source 
des  Mmes.  Queen  Elizabeth  had  sent  hirn  already 
a  set  of  diamonds. 

The  epic,  of  which  an  imaginary  Francus  of  Troy 
was  the  hero,  broke  off  at  the  stem  before  the  plant 
had  come  into  flower.  But  the  Pindaric  odes 
reached  their  full  maturity  of  strophe,  antistrophe, 
epode,  and  all  the  dithyrambic  flights  the  finest 
lyrical  frenzy  could  desire.  Their  only  lack  was 
that  of  the  true  lyrical  fire  which  should  have 
glowed  through  all  this  measured  extravagance. 
It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  that  he  should  have 
failed  in  such  an  adventure.  Who  has  succeeded 
in  it  in  any  modern  language  ?  His  imitations  of 
Anacreon's  pretty,  sportive,  graceful  little  pictures 
were  more  successful.  There  are,  too,  fine  pieces 
in  the  Horatian  manner,  especially  one  noble  little 
poern  in  which  he  pours  forth  a  stirring  invective 
against  the  wood-cutters  who  had  laid  low  the 
5 


66  French  Literature. 

primeval  trees  of  the  forest  of  Gastine.  There  is, 
too,  a  strong  vein  of  sound  feeling  in  his  Discours 
sur  les  misses  du  temps.  We  find  so  much  that  is 
good  in  him,  in  fine,  that  while  we  must  discard 
and  even  wonder  at  the  extravagant  admiration  felt 
for  him  by  his  contemporaries,  our  judgment  must 
be  that,  however  greatly  he  may  be  deficient  in 
taste  and  tact,  he  certainly  does  not  lack  genius. 

So  much  cannot  be  said  for  Jodelle,  who  aimed 
at  reviving  Sophocles  and  Terence,  as  Ronsard  had 
sought  to  bring  back  the  epic  and  lyric  poets. 
Jodelle  believed  in  poetic  inspiration  apparently, 
for  he  wrote  with  facility  and  in  haste.  It  took 
him  only  a  few  weeks  to  prepare  his  tragedy  of 
Cleopdtre,  and  his  comedy  of  Eugene  ou  la  Ren- 
contre. They  were  performed  before  the  court  and 
had  immediate  and  brilliant  success.  Jodelle,  es- 
corted by  hi«  friends,  went  in  triumphal  procession 
from  Rheims  to  Arceuil,  met  on  the  way  a  he-goat, 
seized  him,  decked  him  with  ivy  and  ribands,  and 
dragged  him  into  their  festal  hall,  where  Eonsard 
improvised  a  dithyrambic  ode.  This  drinking-bout 
seems  to  have  been  so  much  to  the  taste  of  Jodelle, 
that  even  his  glory  and  the  patronage  of  kings  were 
not  incentives  strong  enough  to  hold  him  back  from 
ruin.  He  ceased  to  produce,  and  Gamier  took  his 
place  as  the  dramatist  of  the  revivers  of  classical 
taste. 

Eemy  Belleau,  among  the  poets  of  this  group, 
though  not  tainted  like  the  rest  with  pedantry, 
survives  only  in  his  dancing  and  joyous  Avril,  a 
little  song  that  sings  itself.  Baif,  imitator  of 
Moschus  and  Theocritus,  was  a  complete  pedant. 
He  even  sought  to  introduce  the  comparative  and 
superlative  forms  from  the  Latin,  which  drew  upon 
him  Du  Bellay's  ironical  sonnet,  ending  with  the 
verse . 

Docte,  doctieur  et  doctime  Baif. 
One  who  pushed  the  faults  of  Ronsard  to  the  ex- 


The  Renaissance.  67 

treme  was  Guilluame-Salluste,  seigneur  du  Bartas, 
brave  follower  of  Henri  of  Navarre.  His  last  song 
was  in  celebration  of  the  victory  of  Ivry,  which 
Macaulay  has  so  stirringly  sung  in  English.  It  was 
strange  that  Du  Bartas  should  have  clung  so  eagerly 
to  the  poetical  creed  of  Ronsard,  for  no  one  could 
have  more  sincerely  and  more  gallantly  op- 
posed the  religious  and  political  creed  of  the  Ron- 
sard clique.  In  fact,  while  using  their  style,  he 
eschewed  their  pagan  themes  and  chose  Biblical 
subjects  by  preference.  His  first  heroine  was 
Judith,  the  Hebrew  deliverer.  His  next  work,  the 
Semaine,  was  a  commentary  on  the  account  given 
in  Genesis  of  the  creation.  Full  of  sins  against  good 
taste,  as  he  is,  the  loftiness  of  his  spirit  and 
his  serious  and  often  grand  thought  have 
blinded  foreigners  to  his  faults  of  style.  He  was 
not  only  much  admired  and  translated  in  his  own 
day,  but  even  in  later  days  Goethe  is  to  be  found 
reproaching  the  French  with  their  lack  of  appre- 
ciation for  one  whom  he  considers  one  of  the  great- 
est of  their  poets. 

Beside  Du  Bartas,  in  the  camp,  in  the  field,  at  the 
desk,  was  another  soldier  of  Henri  of  Navarre. 
This  was  Thdodore-Agrippi  d'Aubigne*,  the  grand- 
father of  an  unworthy  but  famous  descendant, 
Madame  de  Maintenon.  Like  Du  Bartas,  he  is  of 
the  school  of  Ronsard,  though  of  the  faith  of  Calvin. 
His  satirical  poem,  called  Tragiques,  is  a  sort  of 
Juvenal  with  the  flavor  of  the  Hebrew  prophets 
superadded.  Prolixity  is  the  curse  of  this  other- 
wise strong  poet.  It  is  impossible  for  the  reader 
to  keep  up  the  bitter  disgust  and  hate  with  which 
the  poet  seeks  to  inspire  him,  through  eleven  thou- 
sand verses.  Bad  as  the  kings  of  the  house  of  Valois 
were,  it  is  too  much  to  hear  them  reviled  at  a  rate 
that  only  the  antediluvians  could  have  found  time 
for. 

D' Aubigne*  wrote,  besides,  the  Confession  de  Sancy, 
the  Adventures  de  Foeneste,  the  Histoire  Universelle, 


68  French  Literature. 

and  his  racy,  frank,  and  entertaining  Memoires.  But 
the  group  of  memoirs — and  it  is  a  large  one — be- 
longs to  the  time  of  Henry  IV.'s  reign,  not  to  that 
of  his  struggle  with  the  League. 

Imitators  of  Ronsard,  also,  were  Desportes  and 
Bertaut; — Desportes,  rich  abbe  of  Tiron,  Bon  port, 
Aurillac,  and  other  places,  who  kept  a  good  table, 
and  to  whom  Malherbe  once  said:  "Your/>ota(/e  is 
much  better  than  your  psalms;" — Bertaut,  who 
survives  in  virtue  of  two  short  but  exquisite  pas- 
sages of  sweet  melancholy.  Desportes  would  not 
have  come  down  to  posterity,  had  his  fame  de- 
pended upon  those  psalms  of  which  Malherbe  spoke 
so  slightingly.  It  was  to  his  earlier  pieces,  his 
love-songs,  that  he  owed  his  reputation;  and  Henri 
de  Guise  was  humming  one  of  them  but  a  short 
time  before  he  fell  at  Blois  under  the  dagger  of  the 
Valois  prince.  Of  Bertaut's  little  pearls,  one, 
though  bright,  is  so  small  that  it  may  well  be 
strung  here: 

"  Felicite  passee 

Qui  ne  peux  revenir, 
Tourraent  de  ma  pens^e, 
Que  n'ai-je  en  te  perdant  perdu  le  souvenir!" 

Sainte-Beuve  says  of  this,  that  the  mothers  of 
his  generation  knew  it  still  and  sang  it. 

Gamier,  the  dramatist,  though  of  some  merit, 
has  had  the  same  fate  of  remaining  little  more 
than  a  name  on  the  roll-call  of  French  poets. 

Another  of  the  same  school  was  the  Norman, 
Yauquelin  de  la  Fresnaye,  a  pastoral  poet  of  some 
grace  and  delicacy,  a  satirist  and  imitator  of  Hor- 
ace's moral  epistles  of  some  seriousness  and  eleva- 
tion of  tone. 

This  group  of  would-be  reformers,  with  Ronsard 
at  their  head,  though  over-doing  their  work,  were 
a  benefit  to  the  literature  and  especially  the  poetry 
of  France.  The  minds  of  richest  culture,  whose 


The  Renaissance.  f*9 

store  of  Greek  and  Latin  made  them  inclined  to 
despair  of  expressing  themselves  in  the  rude 
mother-tongue,  were  encouraged  by  the  popularity 
of  Ronsard  and  his  fellows  to  engage  in  the  task  of 
polishing  it.  Such  an  c&ort  could  not  fail  in  the 
end  to  enrich  and  ennoble  the  language. 


French  Literature, 


VI. 

FROM  THE  RENAISSANCE  TO  RICHELIEU. 

THE  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew's  Day  was  the 
most  violent  feature  of  a  struggle,  partly  political 
and  partly  religious,  which  made  France  a  battle- 
field for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century.  Torn 
by  contending  factions,  amid  the  horrors  of  a 
dynastic  and  religious  war,  she  was  retarded  in  her 
development,  and,  in  the  end,  was  stripped  of  many 
of  the  best  elements  of  national  prosperity. 

It  was  the  news  of  this  horrible  massacre  which 
crushed  the  last  hope  for  his  country  of  her  ablest 
and  most  impartial  statesman,  the  Chancellor, 
Michel  de  1'Hopital.  It  was  his  firm  opposition  to 
the  scheme  of  the  Cardinal  de'  Lorraine  for  the  es- 
tablishment of  the  Inquisition  in  France  that  alone 
saved  his  country  from  that  curse.  The  States- 
General  had  not  met  for  eighty  years.  Eelying  on 
the  support  of  the  moderate  Catholics,  the  Chan- 
cellor convoked  that  body,  and  addressed  it  in  a 
discourse  which  deserves  to  hold  a  conspicuous 
place  in  the  literature  of  his  country  as  a  model  of 
eloquence,  of  equity,  and  of  statesmanlike  pru- 
dence. He  declares  there  the  great  principle  that 
religious  belief  cannot  be  coerced  by  force,  but 
must  be  won  by  persuasion.  "Gentleness,"  said 
he,  "  will  avail  more  than  rigor.  Let  us  do  away 
with  those  diabolical  words — names  of  party,  fac- 
tion, and  sedition — Lutherans,  Huguenots,  Papists. 
Let  us  not  change  our  name  of  Christians." 

After  his  retirement  to  his  manor  of  Vignay, 
when  the  civil  war  had  broken  out,  he  addressed  to 
the  king  a  remarkable  memoir,  in  which  he  warmly 
pleaded  the  cause  of  the  Reformed,  and  showed  that 


From  the  Renaissance  to  Richelieu.          71 

the  only  remedy  for  the  evils  that  threatened  the 
State,  was  to  satisfy  the  rightful  claims  of  a  party 
too  strong  for  the  royalists  to  hope  to  destroy  it. 
Geruzez  closes  his  account  of  the  life  and  labors  of 
this  eminent  man,  after  large  citations  from  his  able 
state- papers,  with  these  words: — 

"His  high  intelligence  and  the  purity  of  his  heart  put 
him,  not  outside,  but  above  the  parties  of  his  time;  the 
firmness  of  his  character  kept  him  there.  The  law  of 
the  Athenians  against  those  citizens  who  held  aloof  from 
the  conflict  of  parties  would  not  have  reached  him.  As 
long  as  it  was  possible,  he  remained  in  the  arena  and 
gave  it  law.  Too  clear  of  vision,  too  virtuous,  to  follow 
any  of  the  banners  spread  abroad  by  the  factions,  he 
raised  his  own,  and  around  that  flag  he  called  all  that 
were  right-minded,  all  that  had  hearts  devoted  to  the  pub- 
lic welfare.  He  knew  how  to  consummate  the  alliance 
of  politics  and  morals.  He  displayed  the  ability  of  a 
statesman,  without  ever  having  recourse  to  perfidy.  He 
was  altogether  calm  and  inflexible." 

L'  Hopital  had  stood  up,  in  the  heat  of  the  con- 
test between  mutually  hating  factions,  impartial 
and  independent.  There  were  others,  whom  the 
heated  atmosphere  of  conflict  affected  with  as  strong 
a  disgust  for  the  violence  of  extremes,  but  who  did 
not,  like  the  Chancellor,  stand  in  the  breach.  Their 
mission  was  to  philosophize,  since  they  did  not  find 
a  field  in  which  to  act.  Of  this  number  was  Mon- 
taigne's friend,  fitienne  de  la  Boetie,  formed  by  his 
studies  of  Greek  and  Roman  literature  into  an  en- 
thusiastic republican.  His  doctrines  were  set  forth 
in  his  discourse  De  la  Servitude  volontaire,  a  very 
youthful  but  impassioned  and  eloquent  rhapsody  in 
the  cause  of  liberty. 

By  the  side  of  La  Boetie  in  this  labor  of  love, 
though  of  an  earlier  day,  was  Jacques  Amyot, 
whose  share  in  the  task  of  kindling  the  passion  for 
freedom  was  the  translation  of  Plutarch.  Both  La 
Boetie  and  Michel  de  Montaigne  imbibed  not  a  lit- 


72  French  Literature. 

tie  of  their  love  for  antiquity  from  Amyot.  How 
much  Montaigne  admired  him  may  be  seen  from  his 
express  declaration :  "  I  give  the  palm  to  Jacques 
Amyot  above  all  the  writers  of  his  time  for  fresh- 
ness and  purity  of  language." 

Montaigne  himself  is  the  prince  of  doubters,  op- 
posing to  the  fanaticisms  of  his  time  a  steady  front 
of  calm,  good-natured  questioning.  The  old  Gascon 
country-gentleman  is  to  this  day  a  favorite  with 
men  who  know  and  care  nothing  abouth  the  disor- 
ders of  his  time  against  which  his  half-pagan  phi- 
losophy was  reasoned  out  to  fortify  his  own  spirit. 
What  is  the  secret  of  his  charm  ?  Bulwer-Lytton 
says,  that  it  is  his  admirable  knowledge  of  the 
world,  his  knowledge  of  the  human  heart  and  of 
his  own  heart.  Others  say,  it  is  his  easy,  good- 
natured,  familiar  tone,  taking  the  reader,  as  it  were, 
into  his  confidence,  and  making  him  feel  almost  as 
if  he  were  holding  conference  with  himself,  all  his 
wisdom  being  what  Blackstone  describes  the  Com- 
mon-Law to  be,  "  the  perfection  of  common-sense." 
Others  say,  it  is  the  Horatian  mixture  of  sound 
sense  and  sprightly  wit  and  honest  sentiment,  nei- 
ther too  high  nor  too  low  for  the  better  sort  of 
mankind.  Perhaps  it  is  all  these,  and  the  added 
fact  that  he  has  stamped  his  individuality  so  strongly 
upon  his  Essays,  that  we  feel  that  we  know  him 
better  than  we  do  many  with  whom  we  are  thrown 
almost  daily.  It  is  his  style,  his  clear,  fresh,  nat- 
ural style,  that  has  done  this.  He  really  has  noth- 
ing to  tell  us,  that  we  do  not  know  already,  and 
better  than  he  or  any  man  of  his  century  could 
know  it.  But  the  inimitable  manner  in  which  he 
says  what  he  has  to  say,  is  the  charm  by  which  he 
holds  us.  It  is  just  the  same  with  Horace.  No 
revolution  of  taste,  no  new  discoveries  can  put  these 
men  out  of  their  rightful  place  among  the  small  se- 
lect band  loved  in  every  age  by  the  reflective  class 
of  readers  as  personal  friends. 

To  his  free  discursive  style  the  language  owes  a 


From  the  Renaissance  to  Richelieu.          73 

great  debt.  Had  he  been  merely  a  devotee  of  the 
classics,  like  Ronsard,  or  had  he  been  as  utterly 
lawless  in  the  use  of  provincialisms  and  the  Aris- 
tophanic  coinage  of  new  words,  as  was  Rabelais,  he 
might  have  contributed  far  less  to  the  language. 
But  his  judicious  importation  of  new  terms,  by  good 
derivation  from  the  Latin,  was  in  the  main  accepted 
by  his  contemporaries  and  his  successors.  Le  Clerc 
gives  words  so  common  as  gratitude,  enfantillaye, 
diversion,  and  enjoue,  as  among  the  very  many  in- 
troduced by  Montaigne.  Several  of  those  named 
by  Le  Clerc  as  not  ultimately  received  into  the 
language,  have  become  good  English.  Such  are 
condiment,  equanimite,  improvidence,  inanite. 

A  story  is  told  by  his  contemporary,  fitienne 
Pasquier,  in  one  of  his  letters,  which  illustrates  the 
confidence  Montaigne  had  in  the  excellence  of  his 
French,  however  sprinkled  it  might  be  with  oc- 
casional Gasconisras.  The  two  friends  were  walk- 
ing together  in  the  court  of  the  Chateau  de  Blois, 
during  the  session  there  of  the  States-General  in 
1588,  when  during  their  talk  on  literary  matters 
Pasquier  observed  that  there  was  many  a  trace  of 
Gascon  speech  in  the  Essays.  "  As  he  would  not 
believe  me,"  says  Pasquier,  "  I  took  him  to  my 
room,  where  I  had  his  book,  and  there  pointed  out 
to  him  many  words  which  are  familiar,  not  to 
Frenchmen,  but  only  to  Gascons,  as  un  patenostre, 
un  debte,  un  recontre;  and  such  phrases  asces  ouvrages 
sentent  a  Vhuile  or  a  la  lampe.  Especially  I  showed 
him  that  he  used  the  word  jouir  altogether  after 
the  fashion  of  Gascony,  and  not  according  to  the 
practice  of  our  Frencn  tongue,  as  la  santt  que  je 
j'ouis  jusques  d  present,  Tamitie  est  jmiie  a  mesure 
qu'elle  est  desiree,  la  vraie  solitude  sepeut  jouir  au 
milieu  des  villes,  &c.  Many  other  phrases  did  I  point 
out  to  him,  not  only  with  regard  to  this  word,  but 
to  many  others  also.  And  I  imagined  that  he 
would  order  all  these  things  to  be  corrected  in  the 
next  then  forthcoming  edition  of  his  book.  But 


74  French  Literature. 

not  only  did  he  do  nothing  of  the  sort,  but  when  it 
came  to  pass  that  he  was  overtaken  by  death,  his 
adopted  daughter  caused  everything  to  be  printed 
exactly  as  it  stood,  and  in  her  preliminary  letter 
told  us  that  his  widow  had  sent  her  the  MS.  in  the 
condition  in  which  he  had  intended  that  it  should 
appear." 

Excellent  adopted  daughter !  She  certainly  under- 
stood Montaigne  much  better  than  did  his  worthy 
but  somewhat  pedantic  friend.  Montaigne  was 
proud  of  being  a  Gascon,  and  liked  to  keep  the 
Gascon  flavor  about  his  French.  The  purists  would 
take  all  destinctive  flavors  out  of  every  noble  and 
highly  individual  style,  if  they  could  have  their 
way. 

But  the  greatest  merit  of  Montaigne — a  merit 
which  he  shares  with  the  Chancellor  de  1'Hopital 
— was  the  spirit  of  tolerance.  Toleration  of  the 
opinions  of  others  was  the  key-note  of  his  whole 
system  of  thought.  It  is  an  amazing  fact  in  the 
history  of  that  age  of  bitter  intolerance  that  two 
such  men  as  the  Chancellor  and  the  Gascon  philoso- 
pher should  have  been  able  to  keep  their  rninds  so 
pure  from  all  taint  of  this  most  contagious  of  dis- 
eases. That  they  did  so  uniformly  and  courageously 
is  more  to  their  credit  than  any  other  excellence 
that  can  be  found  in  the  career  or  the  writings  of 
either  of  them.  Like  de  1'Hopital,  Montaigne's 
place  in  the  dissensions  of  his  time  was  that  of 
mediator  between  the  contending  parties,  and  he 
kept  up  friendly  relations  with  men  of  all  creeds. 
That  he  was  unable  to  keep  that  impartially  inquir- 
ing tendency  of  his  mind,  which  expressed  itself  in 
his  favorite  motto,  Que  sais-je? ,  out  of  the  sphere  of 
religious  dogma,  is  certain.  But  he  was  far  from 
being  a  professed  unbeliever,  and  died  in  the  act  of 
painfully  raising  himself  in  bed  to  receive  the  last 
rites  of  his  Church. 

It  remains  to  make  some  brief  mention  of  his 
personal  history.  He  was  of  English  extraction, 


From  the  Renaissance  to  Richelieu.          75 

which  may  account  for  that  tinge  of  humor,  which 
is  so  unlike  anything  French,  that  pervades  his  es- 
says. 

His  real  family  name  was  Eyquem,  the  surname, 
de  Montaigne,  being  taken  from  the  little  manor  of 
Montaigne  in  the  department  of  the  Dordogne, 
which  he  inherited.  His  father,  whose  memory  he 
greatly  revered  and  of  whom  he  speaks  as  often 
and  as  fondly  as  Horace  does  of  his,  brought  him 
up  very  carefully,  having  special  instructors  for  him, 
and  suffering  him  to  speak  only  Latin  from  his 
earliest  years.  One  of  his  masters  was  the  famous 
scholar,  George  Buchanan.  He  received  in  1554 
the  appointment  of  Counsellor  to  the  Parliament  of 
Bordeaux,  and  was  in  the  reigns  of  Francis  II.  and 
Charles  IX.  a  follower  of  the  court  in  several  cities. 
But,  having  in  1570  succeeded  to  his  inheritance, 
he  gave  up  his  appointment,  retired  to  his  chateau, 
and  devoted  himself  to  his  books  and  his  writings, 
varying  this  occupation  by  travels  for  his  health  in 
Germany  and  Italy,  where  he  studied  men  and 
manners.  Twice  serving  as  Mayor  of  Bordeaux, 
after  his  return  from  his  travels,  he  continued  to 
write  his  Essays — of  which  five  editions  were  pub- 
lished during  his  lifetime — until  his  death  in  1592, 
in  the  sixtieth  year  of  his  age. 

We  have  already  seen  something  of  Pasquier,  in 
his  interview  with  Montaigne  at  Blois.  He  was  a 
friend  worthy  of  the  sincere  and  thoughtful  Gascon 
gentleman.  His  studies  in  the  early  history  of  his 
country  were  made  to  bear  fruit  in  his  Recherches ; 
and  his  Lettres,  from  which  the  passage  lately 
quoted  was  taken,  are  still  of  value  as  containing 
the  testimony  of  an  acute  and  observing  witness  on 
many  important  facts  in  the  history  of  his  times. 
He  bore  no  ignoble  part  in  the  events  of  a  period 
in  which  there  were  so  many  ignoble  characters 
and  so  many  unworthy  deeds.  He  deserves  credit, 
too,  for  raising  his  voice,  along  with  the  President 
Claude  Fauchet,  against  the  universal  depreciation 


76  French  Literature. 

of  the  older  literature  of  the  country,  of  which  Ron- 
sard  had  set  the  fashion. 

A  man  of  considerable  learning  and  member  of 
a  family  of  famous  printers  and  publishers,  Henri 
Estienne,  took  just  the  opposite  course  in  his  Apol- 
ogie  pour  Herodole.  He  wrote,  besides,  two  works 
still  read  by  philologists,  his  Precellence  du  Lan- 
gage  francais,  and  the  Dialogues  du  frangais  ital- 
ianise.  His  father  published  the  French  Bible  of 
1545. 

Among  the  writers  of  the  sixteenth  century  must 
also  be  mentioned  Jean  Bodin,  the  author  of  the 
Republique,  and  Charron,  the  author  of  the  Sagesse. 
As  both  these  writers  were  mere  imitators,  any  de- 
tailed criticism  of  them  would  be  waste  of  time. 

It  is  quite  otherwise  with  Francois  de  La  None, 
the  hardy  and  able  soldier,  the  soul  of  honor,,  be- 
loved by  the  Huguenots  and  respected  by  the  Cath- 
olics, who  called  him  the  '"Protestant  Bayard." 
His  impartial  spirit  and  love  of  justice  are  as  man- 
ifest in  his  Discours  politiques  et  militaires,  com- 
posed during  his  five  years'  imprisonment,  as  in  his 
conduct  through  the  course  of  a  most  eventful  life. 
Nervous,  energetic,  and  rhetorical  in  his  style,  like 
De  1'Hopital,  he  resembles  him  also  in  his  thought. 
Both  were  just  and  high-minded  men,  though  of 
different  creeds. 

Opposed  to  La  Noue,  we  have  the  equally  gallant 
soldier,  the  equally  able  narrator,  but  bitter  Cath- 
olic leader,  Blaise  de  Montluc,  of  whose  Commen- 
taires  Henri  of  Navarre,  Huguenot  chief  as  he  was, 
said,  that  it  was  la  Bible  des  capitaines. 

The  religious  and  dynastic  wars  of  this  period 
were  accompanied  by  furious  party  pamphlets  and 
by  the  atrocious  sermons  of  the  preachers  of  the 
League,  inciting  to  assassination — men,  at  a  later 
day,  disavowed  with  horror  by  Bossuet,  in  the  name 
of  the  Church.  These  rancorous  productions  of 
party-spirit  were  scathingly  rebuked  by  the  famous 
Satyre  Menippee,  a  work  composed  by  a  number  of 


From  the  Renaissance  to  Richelieu.          77 

writers,  at  the  head  of  whom  were  the  canons, 
Pierre  Le  Boy  and  Claude  Gillot.  During  that  con- 
ference in  which  Henri  IV.  went  through  the  form 
of  conversion  from  the  Huguenot  faith  to  the  Cath- 
olic, in  the  year  1593,  these  canons,  with  Florent 
Chrestien,  Nicolas  Rapin,  the  learned  Passerat,  and 
the  profound  jurisconsult,  Pierre  Pithou,  sot  about 
their  congenial  task  of  confounding  the  extremists. 
It  is  by  a  comedy  in  which  the  bitter  Swiftian  irony 
plays  the  greatest  part,  that  they  accomplish  their 
object,  of  laughing  down  the  zealots. 

At  the  same  time  that  these  satirists  were  utter- 
ing their  eloquent  prose,  there  came  forward  an- 
other satirist,  the  poet  Mathurin  Regnier.  He, 
however,  attacked  the  manners  and  morals  of  the 
time,  without  meddling  with  affairs  of  State. 
With  fine  passages,  and  abounding  in  clearly  drawn 
and  vigorous  pictures,  choice  in  his  language, 
though  capricious  and  irregular  in  the  movement 
of  his  thought,  he  is  a  powerful  but  unequal  poet. 

To  the  same  period  belongs  Malherbe,  whom 
French  critics  exalt  as  a  master  in  good  taste  and 
as  rather  a  moulder  of  French  verse  into  careful 
propriety  than  as  a  profound  thinker  or  an  impas- 
sioned singer.  The  ode  to  Marie  de  Medici s  on 
the  happy  success  of  her  regency  is  signalized  as 
the  most  finished  of  Malherbe's  works.  He  was 
more  critic  than  poet,  and  had  pupils  to  whom  he 
gave  oral  lessons  in  the  art  of  poetry,  among  them 
Honorat  cle  Bueil,  Marquis  de  Racan,  and  the  Pres- 
ident Maynard.  Boileau  and  La  Fontaine,  in  the 
next  age,  give  high  praise  to  Malherbe  and  Racau. 
Demogeot,  after  commenting  on  their  faults,  sums 
up  his  criticism  by  declaring  their  merits.  "Mal- 
herbe," he  says,  "introduced  into  the  loftier  class 
of  literary  work  the  element  of  truth,  Maynard 
dexterity  (finesse],  Racan  grace  and  sentiment." 

The  interminably  drawn-out  pastoral  of  Honore* 
d'Urfe,  the  Astree,  imitated  from  the  Diana  of 
Montemayor,  so  immensely  popular  in  that  age 


78  French  Literature. 

and  long  after,  brought  into  vogue  the  affected  and 
highly  sophisticated  shepherds  and  shepherdesses, 
that  held  so  large  a  place  in  the  literature,  first  of 
Italy  and  Spain,  and  then  of  both  France  and  Eng- 
land. Racan  followed  this  lead  in  his  Bergeries, 
but  without  attaining  the  success,  or  indeed  the 
merit,  of  d'Urfe.  A  pastoral  drama,  such  as  the 
Beryeries,  by  putting  into  action  on  the  stage  the 
unrealities  of  conventional  shepherds,  naturally 
brought  out  in  strong  relief  the  absurdity  of  the 
whole  conception.  Yet  there  are  in  this  long- 
winded,  five-act  play  some  fine  lines  of  true  poetry, 
breathing  a  heartfelt  love  of  the  country. 

Maynard  had  a  more  nervous  and  pointed  style, 
and,  disappointed  in  his  hopes  of  court-favor, 
launched  one  sonnet  at  Eichelieu  which  is  so 
good  as  to  be  numbered  among  the  few  that  rank 
as  really  excellent. 

Among  the  wild  poets  of  the  court,  who,  like 
Maynard,  produced  some  immodest  pieces,  was  one, 
who  was  so  imprudent  as  to  make  enemies  of  men 
capable  of  making  his  sins  against  morality  a  pre- 
text for  persecuting  him.  This  was  The'ophile 
Viaud.  For  a  collection,  called  the  Parnasse 
satirique — to  which  Maynard  was  one  of  the  con- 
tributors— Yiaud  was  burned  in  effigy  on  the  Place 
de  Grre~ve.  In  his  prison,  however,  he  wrote  de- 
fenses of  himself,  which  give  him  high  rank  as  a 
prose  writer.  As  a  poet,  and  especially  as  author 
of  the  tragedy  of  Pyrame  et  Thisbe,  he  falls  into 
the  vices  of  Spanish  hyperbole  and  Italian  con- 
ceits. 

We  reach  now  a  writer,  whose  influence  upon 
French  prose  has  been  very  great.  Balzac 
has  been  called  the  Malherbe  of  prose;  but 
he  was  something  more  than  this.  It  is  true 
that  he  laid  great  stress  on  cadence,  on  har- 
mony, on  purity  of  style,  on  choice  and  propriety 
of  diction,  on  pleasing  the  ear  while  enlightening 
the  mind.  But  he  was  also  capable  of  lofty  and  no- 


From  the  Renaissance  to  Richelieu.  <  9 

ble  thought.  Still,  he  did  not  possess  a  sufficiently 
powerful  mind,  with  force  and  compass  of  thought 
and  unity  of  design  enough,  to  round  and  complete 
a  master- work.  Tiiere  is  no  big  heart  behind  that 
bright  intelligence  of  his,  to  concentrate  its  rajs 
and  flash  them  into  a  steady  stream  of  light  or 
warm  them  into  a  burning  fire.  Yet  there  is  fine 
and  glowing  rhetoric,  especially  in  the  Socrate  chre- 
l>' n,  and  strong  polemical  argument  in  the  Entre- 
tiens  a  Menandre.  His  great  merit,  indeed,  is 
rhetorical  skill;  and  the  language  owes  him  much 
in  point  of  style.  It  is  also  his  fault,  as  with  Dry- 
den  and  Macaulay  among  English  writers,  for  Dry- 
den's  prose  is  like  Macaulay's  in  respect  to  this 
same  monotony  of  brilliant  and  pointed  finish. 

In  Guez  de  Balzac  we  have  the  note-mark  of  the 
polish  of  the  seventeenth  century.  At  the  close 
of  the  century  was  to  form,  like  mutually  attracted 
atoms  that  move  into  crystallized  shape,  that  clus- 
ter of  men  of  genius  which  constituted  the  golden 
age  of  French  literature.  Balzac  is  therefore  a  no- 
table figure  of  the  period.  He  is,  moreover,  as 
Geruzez  says,  the  link  and  the  mediator  between 
the  hotel  Rambouillet  and  the  Academic  francaise. 

Madame  de  Rambouillet,  the  "  Arthenice  "  x)f  that 
affected  coterie,  whose  pedantries  were  so  easily 
caricatured  by  Moliere,  and  whose  influence  was 
yet  so  wholesome  in  removing  filthy  conversation 
from  the  language  of  society,  looked  up  to  Balzac 
as  to  an  oracle.  Equally  was  he  so  .regarded  by 
Richelieu's  newly-founded  Society  of  the  Learned. 

The  dainty  marquise  and  her  friends,  the  fine 
ladies  called  les  Precieuses,  shunning  the  camp-vul- 
garized court  of  Henri  IY.,  in  their  efforts  to  main- 
tain a  pure-thinking  and  pure-speaking  society,  did 
succeed  in  giving  elegance,  delicacy,  arid  grace  to 
the  spoken  tongue.  They  even  did  some  service 
to  morals  in  forcing  vice,  out  of  a  new-born  shame, 
to  pay  virtue  the  homage  of  abstaining  from  ex- 
pressing itself  openly. 


80  French  Literature. 

The  first  glory  of  the  Hotel  Ramlouillet  began 
with  the  mother  of  the  charming  marquise,  Julie 
Savelli,  wife  of  the  Marquis  Jean  de  Vivonne,  Ital- 
ian by  birth,  and  the  child  of  a  higher  civilization 
in  point  of  manners  than  France  had  yet  reached. 
Her  daughter,  Catherine  de  Yivonne,  who  became 
the  Marquise  de  Eambouillet,  inherited  the  winning 
Florentine  sparkle  of  the  mother  and  the  peculiar 
sweetness  of  the  southern  manner.  She  was  well 
versed,  too,  in  the  rich  literatures  of  Italy  and 
Spain.  Demogeot,  in  citing  the  testimony  of  Talle- 
mant  des  Eeaux  to  the  charms  of  this  queen  of 
society,  remarks  that  Tallemant  can  find  only  one 
fault  iu  her,  and  that  is  an  excessive  delicacy  in 
language  ;  to  which  he  adds :  "  And  when  one  reads 
Tallemant,  one  cannot  help  recognizing  the  fact 
that  this  '  fault '  is  but  one  virtue  the  more." 

Her  influence  on  literature,  however,  aside  from 
her  high  regard  for  decency  in  thought  and  lan- 
guage, was  not  good.  Her  preferences  for  foreign 
models  tended  to  encourage  bad  taste,  the  artificial 
Marini  being  then  the  guiding  star  in  Italian  litera- 
ture, and  equally  dangerous  models  in  another 
direction  attracting  French  imitators  towards  Span- 
ish literature.  Inflated  language  was  the  mark  of 
weakness  borne  by  the  Spanish  ;  perpetual  effort  at 
wit  and  point,  that  exhibited  by  the  Italian. 

The  most  brilliant  period  of  the  Hotel  Eam- 
bouillet was  from  the  death' of  Malherbe  to  that  of 
Voiture — from  1628  to  1648.  It  owed  much  of  its 
fame  to  the  wit  and  grace  of  one  of  the  Marquise's 
daughters,  the  celebrated  Julie  d'Angennes. 
Around  the  brilliant  mother  and  daughter  were 
gathered  at  those  famous  sessions,  called  the  ruelles 
in  that  day  as  later  they  were  called  salons,  a  daz- 
zling band  of  women,  fair  and  witty  and  high-born. 
There  were  the  Princesse  de  Conde,  the  last  of 
Henri  IV.'s  passions,  that  witty  Charlotte  de  Mont- 
morency,  whose  husband  had  to  hurry  her  away 
from  the  fascinated  eyes  of  the  old  Bearnesej 


From  the  Renaissance  to  Richelieu.          81 

Mademoiselle  du  Vigeau,  the  great  Condi's  first 
love ;  Mademoiselle  de  Bourbon,  afterwards  the 
famous  Madame  de  Longueville  ;  Richelieu's  niece, 
the  Duchesse  d'Aiguillon ;  that  mistress  of  cookery 
as  well  as  of  gallantry,  the  Marquise  de  Sable; 
Madame  de  la  Vergne ;  the  Corntesse  de  Fiesque ; 
the  Comtesse  de  Saint-Martin ;  the  Duchesse  de 
Chevreuse ;  the  young  and  brilliant  Marquise  de 
Sevigne  ;  the  Comtesse  de  Maure ;  and  that  tawny- 
tressed  Mademoiselle  Paulet,  whose  locks  and 
leonine  spirit  won  her  the  sobriquet  of  "  Lioness." 

Quite  as  select  were  the  masculine  visitors,  includ- 
ing the  Condes,  the  Contis,  the  La  Rochefoucaulds, 
the  Bussys,  the  Grammonts,  to  whom  were  added 
such  literary  men  as  Chapelain,  Conrart,  Cotin, 
Pelisson,  Segrais,  Benserade,  and,  in  the  later  days, 
Corneille  himself. 

In  paying  his  court  to  the  "adorable  Julie," 
Montausier  devised  a  graceful  tribute,  which 
brought  all  the  poets  together  in  an  act  of  homage 
to  the  young  lady  of  the  house  of  Rambouillet.  On 
the  1st  of  January,  1641,  she  found  on  her  toilette,  in 
waking  up,  deux  cahiers  de  velin,  exactly  alike, 
each  leaf  of  which  contained  a  picture  of  a  lovely 
flower,  painted  in,  miniature  by  Robert,  and  under 
it  a  madrigal  composed  by  one  of  the  poets. 
Chapelain,  Godeau,  Colletat,  Scudery,  Desmarest, 
and  Corneille  were  among  the  nineteen  who  wrote 
the  verses  for  the  twenty-nine  flowers  of  this  Guir- 
lande  de  Julie. 

This  delicate  and  intellectual  style  of  compliment 
was  characteristic  of  the  whole  order  of  intercourse 
between  the  sexes  in  that  elegant  mansion.  The 
lofty  spirit  and  noble  sentiments  of  Corneille's 
heroes  and  heroines  were  born  there  ;  the  fine  lan- 
guage and  even  its  over-strained  stateliness,  were 
born  there,  too. 

But  no  man  can  be  monk,  or  woman  nun,  with- 
out narrowing  the  whole  nature ;  no  society  can 
isolate  itself  without  suffering  the  penalty  of  be- 


82  French  Literature. 

coming  conventional  in  its  ideas  and  frivolous  in  its 
productions.  This  fate  came  to  the  Rambouillet 
circle ;  and  the  affectations  it  fell  into  were  of 
course  greatly  exaggerated  by  the  circles  that  imi- 
tated it,  especially  those  in  the  provinces.  It  was 
the  absurdities  of  these  imitators  that  Moli£re  after- 
wards ridiculed  in  his  Precieuses  ridicules.  The 
real  Precieuses  may  be  said  to  have  disbanded 
when  Julie  followed  her  husband,  the  Due  de  Mon- 
tausier,  in  1648,  to  his  governorship  of  Saintonge. 
It  was  also  the  date  of  Vincent  Yoiture's  death. 

Voiture  had  been  the  special  mouth-piece,  in 
prose  and  in  verse,  of  this  spirited  little  society  of 
purists.  Euphuist  in  grain,  he  lavishes  his  wit  in 
prodigal  display,  playing  with,  words  and  ideas 
alike,  seeking  far-fetched  congruities  and  contrasts, 
jesting  and  trifling  pleasantly,  sometimes  with  really 
charming  fancy,  and  yet  not  making  too  much  of 
his  diverting  trifles.  He  was,  however,  something 
more  than  a  mere  literary  man,  for,  with  true 
political  foresight,  he  was  among  the  first  to  appre- 
ciate the  policy  of  Eichelieu,  and  early  became  his 
staunch  supporter. 

A  friend  of  Voiture's  and  a  writer  in  the  same 
light  and  pleasant  vein,  was  Sarrasin,  the  author  of 
the  Testament  de  Goulu,  the  Ballade  d*Eulever, 
the  Ode  sur  la  lataille  de  Lens.  He  was  capable  of 
stronger  things,  and  won  fame  as  a  good  prose  writer 
in  his  Siege  de  Dunkerque.  But  Sarrasin  belonged 
to  the  circle  of  Mademoiselle  de  Scudery,  which 
was  a  sort  of  subdivision  of  that  of  the  Hotel  Ram- 
bouillet, almost  a  secession  from  it,  mere  authors 
being  covertly  a  little  laughed  at  by  the  great  lady 
who  presided  there. 

But  when  we  have  reached  Balzac,  the  Marquise 
de  Rambouillet,  Mademoiselle  de  Scudery,  Yoiture, 
and  Sarrasin,  we  have  fairly  touched  upon  the 
beginning  of  Eichelieu's  influence  in  the  literary 
sphere ;  and  this  influence,  with  its  far-reaching 
effects,  must  give  us  a  new  starting  point. 


From  the  Renaissance  to  Richelieu.          83 

One  valuable  part,  however,  of  tlie  literature  of 
Henri  IV.'s  time  must  be  mentioned,  before  we 
take  up  the  writers  of  Richelieu's  period.  To  the 
beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  must  be  as- 
signed those  instructive  and  entertaining  memoirs 
of  men  who  took  part  in  the  affairs  of  the  troubled 
period  which  coincides  in  the  main  with  the  closing 
years  of  the  sixteenth  century ;  and  who  have  so 
admirably  painted  for  us  the  manners,  opinions,  style, 
and  minute  historical  details  of  their  time. 

The  best  of  these  memoirs  are  those  of  that  bitter 
partisan  of  the  League,  the  Vicomte  Jean  de  Ta- 
vannes ;  those  of  Henri  IV.'s  great  minister,  Maxi- 
milien  de  Bethune,  Marquis  de  Rosny  and  Due  de 
Sully;  those  of  Henri's  tutor,  Pierre  Palma  Cayet; 
those  of  Pierre  de  Lestoile ;  those  of  Henri's  first 
wife,  Marguerite  of  France ;  those  of  the  staunch 
Huguenot  captains,  Agrippa  d'Aubigne'  and  Du 
Plessis-Mornay,  the  "  Pope  of  the  Huguenots."  To 
these  must  be  added  the  memoirs  of  Brantome,  the 
greatest  anecdote-teller  of  them  all,  the  most  amus- 
ing, and  personally  the  least  worthy.  Matthieu, 
too,  should  be  mentioned,  as  the  author  of  several 
histories  of  events  in  his  own  times.  All  of  these 
writers  are  grouped,  in  one  way  or  another,  about 
the  person  of  Henri  of  Navarre.  De  Thou,  who 
belongs  to  the  same  time,  and  whose  History  has 
great  qualities,  unfortunately  wrote  in  Latin,  and 
has  therefore  no  claim  to  a  place  in  French  litera- 
ture. 

Among  the  other  memoirs  of  from  1555  to  1650, 
are  those  of  Guillaume  de  Saulx-Tavannes,  Antoine 
des  Puget,  Jean  de  Mergey,  Philippe  Hurault,  Henri 
de  La  Tour  d'Auvergne,  Boivin  du  Villars,  Charles 
de  Valois,  and  Nicolas  de  Neufville.  They  furnish 
ample  material  for  the  thorough  study  of  their 
period,  and  contribute  largely  to  the  making  up  of 
a  true  history  of  France.  Demogeot  warmly 
praises  the  style  and  matter  of  Du  Plessis-Moruay. 


84  French  Literature. 

"  The  language  of  Mornay,"  he  says,  "  resembles  his 
costume  :  it  is  still  d  la  Coligny.  It  is  the  old  language 
of  the  16th  century  with  its  archaisms  and  its  labored 
constructions.  But  all  the  energy,  all  the  masculine 
pride  of  his  soul  flashes  forth  every  moment  from  the 
cloud.  His  style  is  admirable  in  firmness  and  nobleness. 
Deeply  read  and  learned,  with  the  sap  of  antiquity 
quickening  his  intellect,  made  wiser  to  understand  the 
past  by  his  experience  in  affairs,  the  vigor  of  his  discourse 
recalls  that  of  the  speeches  in  Thucydides.  Writer  and 
soldier,  his  written  thought  shines  and  smites  like  a  sword." 


From  Rididied,  U\  Louis  XIV. 


VII. 

FBOM  RICHELIEU  TO  LOUIS  XTV. 

THE  taste  for  poetry  which  led  Maecenas  to  per- 
;->etrate  bad  verses  did  not,  fortunately,  expend  itself 
solely  in  that  direction.  The  same  propensity  in 
the  great  statesman  who  ruled  France  for  so  many 
years  during  a  most  critical  period,  was  also  allied  to 
a  happy  appreciation  of  the  importance  of  linking  his 
career  with  the  names  and  works  of  great  men  of 
letters.  It  was  his  misfortune  that  he  was  not  al- 
ways able  to  distinguish  between  mere  men  of  let- 
ters and  men  of  genius.  Still,  his  influence  on 
French  literature  was  beneficial.  The  establish- 
ment of  the  Academic  Francaise,  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  purity'  of  the  language  and  the  eleva- 
tion of  literary  men  to  an  order  in  the  State,  was 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  the  Cardinal  de 
Richelieu's  achievements.  To  this  glory,  he  added 
another.  This  was  the  stimulus  his  patronage 
gave  to  the  dramatic  art. 

Armand  du  Plessis  de  Richelieu,  made  bishop  of 
Lugon  by  Henri  IV.,  first  attracted  attention  to  his 
genius  for  affairs  by  the  very  able  speech  which  he 
made  as  the  representative  of  the  clergy  at  the 
meeting  of  the  States-General  in  1614.  The  court 
became  eager  to  secure  the  services  of  such  a 
man.  Attached  to  the  service  of  the  queen, 
Marie  de  Medici,  he  remained  at  court  until  the 
fall  of  the  Concini  ministry.  In  his  retirement 
from  public  affairs,  which  lasted  for  seven  years, 
he  produced  a  number  of  theological  works,  of  no 
extraordinary  merit.  The  queen-mother,  resum- 
ing her  influence  at  court,  Richelieu  was  raised  to 
the  dignity  of  Cardinal  and  became  Prime  Minister. 


815  French  Literature* 

The  great  work  which  he  accomplished  of  unifying 
France,  of  strengthening  the  monarchy  into  actual 
absolutism,  and  of  making  his  country  the  greatest 
power  in  Europe,  we  have  nothing  to  do  with  here. 
It  is  only  of  his  share  in  the  literary  progress  of 
France  that  I  shall  speak.  Of  his  own  works,  the  cor- 
respondence, and  the  accounts  of  his  administration 
entitled  the  Succincte  narration  des  (jrandes  actions 
du  roi,  and  the  Testament  politiqug,  are  all  stamped 
with  the  seal  of  his  great  political  and  administra- 
tive genius.  His  Memoires,  though  full  of  tedious 
passages  and  displays  of  bad  taste,  have  great  value 
as  material  for  history. 

The  work  of  ruling  a  great  state  and  carrying  on 
difficult  negotiations  with  foreign  powers  was  not 
enough  for  his  active  spirit ;  even  the  added  task 
of  compiling  memoirs  did  not  fill  all  his  leisure. 
He  found  time  for  attempts  at  purely  literary  work. 
"  What  do  you  think  I  take  the  greatest  pleasure 
in  doing?"  he  asked  one  day  of  Bois-Eobert. 
" Monseigneur,"  was  the  courtier's  reply,  "it  is  in 
making  the  happiness  of  France."  "  Not  at  all," 
said  the  Cardinal,  "  it  is  in  making  verses." 

He  loved  to  invent  plots  for  plays,  which  he 
would  put  into  the  hands  of  his  poets  to  be  worked 
out.  Sometimes  he  would  furnish  whole  scenes, 
sometimes  a  number  of  lines.  His  poets,  Bois- 
Robert,  Colletet,  L'Etoile,  Eotron,  and  Corneille, 
were  known  by  the  name  of  The  Cardinal's  Brigade. 
He  cut  out  their  work  for  them,  assigning  an  act  to 
each.  Pelisson  tells  us  that  Mirame,  which  ap- 
peared as  the  work  of  Des  Marets,  was  wholly  the 
Cardinal's.  He  had  built,  expressly  for  its  repre- 
sentation, a  magnificent  hall  in  the  Palais-Cardinal. 
The  same  authority  assures  us  that  he  wrote  no 
less  than  five  hundred  verses  of  the  Grande  Pas- 
torale. 

The  numerous  tragedies  and  pastorals  put  upon 
the  stage  of  the  Hdtel  Marais  by  that  rapid  impro- 
viser  of  plays,  Alexandre  Hardy — he  wrote  over 


From  Richelieu  to  Louis  XIV.  87 

six  hundred — had  kept  tlie  taste  of  the  public  for 
these  entertainments  from  flagging,  and  had  also 
trained  actors  who  were  to  be  fit  instruments  for 
expressing  the  genius  of  Corneille. 

Theophile  de  Yiau,  Racan,  De  Bourron,  Bore'e, 
De  La  Croix,  Pichou,  Du  Cros,  Rayssiguier,  Gom- 
bault,  and  Mairet,  followed  with  various  pieces 
which  made  the  theatre  still  more  popular  and  at 
the  same  time  elevated  the  taste  of  the  public. 
Still,  there  was  among  scholars  a  felt  want  of  order 
and  law  in  the  French  drama,  and  it  was  largely 
this  demand  for  authority  over  the  new  develop- 
ment of  literature  which  led  to  the  founding  of  the 
Academic  Franraise.  Ch apelain  was  foremost  among 
these  reformers.  He  strongly  represented  to  Riche- 
lieu the  necessity  for  the  observance  of  the  three 
unities  of  time,  place,  and  action,  laid  down  by 
Aristotle.  Richelieu  was  delighted  with  the  coun- 
sel, gave  Chapelain  full  authority  over  his  poets, 
and  promised  him  a  pension  of  a  thousand  crowns 
as  dramatic  critic.  Mairet  wrote  his  Sophonisbe  in 
accordance  with  this  regulation.  It  was  the  first 
play  in  the  French  classic  style. 

There  was  a  warm  but  short  struggle  between 
the  favorers  of  the  free  drama,  such  as  Spain  and 
England  recognized,  and  the  regulated  drama, 
which  became  the  form  respected  by  the  great  mas- 
ters of  the  French  theatre.  The  public,  the  actors, 
and  most  of  the  authors  preferred  the  free  drama. 
But  the  Cardinal  was  too  strong  for  them.  On  the 
very  eve  of  great  public  affairs,  in  1635,  when 
France  was  about  to  engage  in  the  Thirty  Years' 
War,  shutting  himself  up  with  his  Brigade,  the  five 
poets,  Richelieu  dictated  his  plots  to  them,  and  set 
them  to  work.  Colletet  especially  worked  to  his 
liking;  but  he  was  dissatisfied  with  Corneille,  and 
withdrew  his  favor  from  him.  Des  Marets  took 
his  place.  One  of  Des  Marets'  pieces,  the  Vision- 
naires,  long  held  the  reputation  of  being  the  finest 
comedy  in  the  language. 


88  French  Literature. 

But  the  withdrawal  of  the  Cardinal's  favor  from 
Corneille  was  the  emancipation  of  a  great  poet.  He 
could  never  have  produced  his  grand  works  under 
the  tutelage  of  another. 

Pierre  Corneille  was  born  at  Eouen  in  1606.  His 
father  being  an  advocate,  he  was  intended  for  the 
same  profession ;  but  the  bent  of  his  genius  drove 
him  to  dramatic  composition.  His  earlier  pieces, 
M£lite,  performed  with  success  in  1629,  Clitandre, 
La  Veuve,  La  G-alerie  du  Palais,  La  Suivante,  and 
La  Place  Royale,  secured  him  popular  favor,  but 
gave  little  indication  of  his  really  great  qualities. 
Neither  did  the  ftfedee,  written  in  imitation  of 
Seneca,  reveal  his  true  power. 

Meanwhile,  he  had  earned  Kichelieu's  ill-will  by 
his  audacity,  it  is  said,  in  altering  the  plan  of  a 
comedy  which  the  Cardinal  had  suggested  to  him. 
Giving  his  attention  to  the  study  of  Spanish  litera- 
ture, he  now  produced  the  Cid,  and  enjoyed  his  first 
great  triumph.  The  public  were  wholly  unprepared 
for  this  intensity  of  passion,  this  outburst  of  thril- 
ling poetry.  There  was  an  eager  enthusiasm 
kindled  for  the  poet's  new  creations,  and  Chimene 
and  Eodrigue  seized  the  hearts  of  all  as  if  by  storm. 
The  impassioned  love  of  the  South,  which  is  so 
sweet  and  fresh  and  always  young — the  same  that 
charms  us  in  Romeo  and  Juliet ; — heroic  sentiment, 
worthy  of  Spain's  chivalry  ;  tragic  woe  that  wrings 
the  heart,  stirred  every  soul  and  forced  the  convic- 
tion on  the  nation  that  a  great  poet  had  arisen  for 
France. 

But  the  triumph  of  the  poet  did  not  deliver  him 
from  the  envy  of  Eichelieu.  Chapelain  was  detailed 
to  draw  up  a  damnatory  criticism  which  the  reluctant 
Academy  was  to  be  induced  to  publish  as  its  own 
decision.  Mairet  and  Scuderi  were  arrayed  against 
the  offending  poet.  But  Chapelain,  who  is  chiefly 
memorable  as  having  butchered  poor  Jeanne  Dare 
over  again  in  his  La  Pucelle,  was  not  the  man  to 
stand  before  a  giant  like  Corneille,  now  that  he  wag 


From  Richelieu  to  Louis  XIV.  89 

beginning  to  know  himself.  Nor  was  Scude'ri, 
whose  fatal  facility  was  of  the  sort  that  Horace 
laughs  at  in  a  poet  of  his  day,  and  whose  Lyyda- 
mon  and  U Amour  tyrannique  and  Alaric,  and  other 
such  improvisations  have  long  since  been  dead,  if 
indeed  they  can  be  said  to  have  ever  lived.  Nor 
was  Mairet,  though  there  was  some  merit  in  that 
Sophonisbe,  which  the  Cid  had  cast  into  the  shade. 

The  GUI  appeared  in  1636,  and,  in  spite  of  the 
jealousy  of  Richelieu's  poets  and  the  enforced  cold- 
ness of  the  Academy,  was  soon  so  popular  with  the 
public,  that  "beautiful  as  the  Cid"  became  a 
proverb.  His  detractors  having  accused  him  of 
plagiarizing  the  best  parts  of  the  Cid  from  Guillem 
de  Castro,  Corneille  now  set  himself  the  task  of 
writing  his  Horace,  on  the  hint  furnished  by  Livy's 
brief  story  of  the  Horatii  and  Curiatii,  no  dramatist 
having  yet  made  use  of  the  legend. 

By  some  French  critics  Horace  is  regarded  as  the 
most  vigorous  and  -the  most  original  effort  of  Cor- 
neille's  genius.  The  characters  of  Sabine  and 
Camille  are  as  finely  contrasted  in  this  play  as 
those  of  Horace  and  Curiace,  and  the  situations  are 
very  moving,  while  the  whole  action  of  the  piece  is 
powerfully  wrought  out.  But  the  elder  Horace  is 
as  vigorously  drawn  as  any  of  the  characters  brought 
into  immediate  action,  and  the  famous  qii'il  mourutf 
the  words  regarded  as  of  highest  sublimity  in  the 
whole  range  of  French  literature,  proceed  from  the 
stern  lips  of  this  proud  .Roman  father. 

His  next  Koman  play,  Cinna,  is  considered  by 
others  among  the  French  critics  as  Coraei lie's  mas- 
terpiece. The  impersonation  in  this  piece  of  the 
spirit  of  liberty  is  fimilie,  the  ward  of  Augustus, 
but  the  beloved  of  Pompey's  grandson.  The  scene 
of  the  conspiracy,  that  in  which  the  Emperor  de- 
liberates whether  he  shall  retire  from  his  exalted 
post  or  hold  it  against  all  assaults,  the  heroic  par- 
don granted  to  the  conspirators,  are  noble  efforts  of 
the  poet,  in  whom  majesty  of  action  and  dignity  of 


90  French  Literature. 

sentiment  found  their  best  expression.  But  there 
is  an  inconsistency  forced  both  on  the  plot  and  on 
the  characters  of  the  conspirators  by  the  favorable 
turn  of  events  which  prevents  that  which  was 
throughout  most  tragical  in  its  spirit  and  prepara- 
tion from  turning  out  a  tragedy  at  all. 

Corneille's  next  play  was  Polyeucte,  a  tragedy 
of  Christian  martyrdom.  The  hero  and  Pauline, 
the  heroine,  draw  the  deepest  sympathy  from  every 
hearer  or  reader.  No  picture  could  be  more  pa- 
thetic than  that  of  these  lovers  giving  up  all,  in  the 
bloom  of  their  youth  and  the  joy  of  their  love,  at 
the  call  of  duty. 

In  his  next  play,  Corneille  had  the  boldness  to 
fill  the  air  of  his  stage  with  the  glory  of  a  dead 
hero,  the  play,  Pompee,  bearing  the  name  of  the 
great  Eoman,  but  not  presenting  him  in  person. 
"  The  dead  Pompey,"  says  Geruzez,  "fills  the  whole 
scene.  He  lives  again  in  the  virile  face  of  Cornelia. 
It  is  to  satisfy  his  angry  manes  that  the  infamous 
Ptolemy  perishes,  and  the  last  words  of  his  widow 
promise  against  Ca3sar  himself  a  thrilling  ven- 
geance." It  was  a  strong  conception,  but  it  is 
marred  in  the  execution  by  an  excess  of  declama- 
tion and  emphasis  in  the  language  put  into  the 
mouths  of  the  chief  characters.  The  turgid  rhet- 
oric of  Lucan  makes  him  a  peculiarly  dangerous 
author  to  draw  one's  inspiration  from;  and  with 
Corneille  he  was  a  great  favorite. 

Corneille  produced  these  masterpieces  in  the 
course  of  six  years.  He  was  now  the  acknowl- 
edged master  in  the  domain  of  tragedy.  There  was 
no  one  to  compete  with  him.  Mai  ret  had  done 
nothing  better  than  the  Sophonisbe.  Du  Kyer  had 
in  his  Scevole  brought  out  some  of  that  same  fine 
old  Eoman  tone  of  heroic  spirit,  which  Corneille 
loved  to  make  the  stage  ring  with;  but  Du  Byer 
could  not  hope  to  rival  the  "noblest  Roman  of 
them  all."  Tristan  had  touched  a  chord  of  pathos 
in  his  Marianne,  but  not  so  thrilling  in  its  notes  of 


From  Richelieu  to  Louis  XIV.  91 

tender  yet  heroic  anguish  as  that  which  the  Chris- 
tian martyrs  in.  Polyeucte  had  moved  the  hearts  of 
men  with.  Rotrou,  Corneille's  staunch  friend,  had 
not  yet  produced  anything  of  marked  value,  though 
destined  in  after  years  to  keep  some  hold  on  the 
memory  by  his  Venceslas  and  his  Saint-  Genest. 

Cornille  was  thus  alone,  at  a  great  height  above 
his  contemporaries,  in  the  sphere  of  tragedy.  He 
now  surprised  every  one  with  a  brilliant  success  in 
comedy.  As  in  the  case  of  his  first  great  triumph 
in  tragedy,  he  had  drawn  his  inspiration  from  Spain, 
so  was  it  now  in  the  case  of  his  comic  masterpiece, 
the  Menteur. 

Dorante,  that  exquisite  liar  who  gives  name  to 
the  comedy,  is  a  masterly  creation.  There  is  an 
easy  grace  and  a  naturalness  in  Corneille's  merri- 
ment, which  strike  us  as  really  wonderful  when  we 
contrast  these  traits  with  the  grandeur  of  thought 
and  tone  which  is  the  dominant  characteristic  of 
his  nobler  tragedies. 

To  these  great  successes  in  tragedy  and  comedy, 
Corneille  added  some  essays  in  the  domain  of  the 
opera,  in  his  Andromede,  the  Toison  d*or,  and 
Psyche. 

Among  his  later  tragedies,  Rodogune,  Heraclius, 
and  Nicomede  are  not  without  merit,  though  bear- 
ing some  traces  of  carelessness  in  style.  These 
plays  also  furnish  examples  of  some  of  those  qual- 
ities which,  though  not  so  marked  in  Corneille  as 
his  grand  diction  and  elevated  tone,  are  eminently 
traits  of  genius.  I  refer  to  his  variety  of  means 
and  motive,  of  characterization  and  plot.  He  is  no 
shoemaker  with  one  last,  no  painter  with  one  color. 
If  taxed,  however  unjustly,  with  plagairism  from 
Spanish  authors,  no  one  could  venture  to  charge  him 
with  copying  himself. 

As  to  the  tone  of  his  works,  it  is  true  that,  in  his 
great  plays,  he  has  given  expression  to  but  one  side 
of  human  nature,  the  heroic.  But  to  how  many 
varieties  of  the  heroic  has  he  given  expression,  and 


92  French  Literature. 

in  how  many  varying  situations  has  he  set  the 
heroic  before  us  !  And,  if  it  be  complained  that 
after  all  it  is  a  monotony  of  heroism,  it  is  surely 
glory  enough  for  one  writer  that  he  has  so  nobly 
portrayed  the  dignity  of  the  human  soul. 

Evil  times  coming  upon  France  during  the 
regency  of  Anne  of  Austria,  Corneille  seems  to 
have  been  affected  by  the  general  feebleness  of  the 
political  conflict  around  him.  He  produced  works 
greatly  inferior  to  his  Polyeucte  during  this  period, 
ceased  after  a  time  to  produce  at  all,  and  lived  to 
see  Racine  take  his  place  in  popular  estimation. 
He  died  in  1684. 

While  the  dramatic  genius  of  Corneille  was 
adding  noble  treasures  to  the  literature  of  France, 
the  philosophical  speculations  of  Des  Cartes,  the 
physical  studies  of  Gassendi,  arid  the  theological 
controversies  of  the  Jansenists  were  dividing  into 
different  camps  the  reflecting  minds  of  the  age.  As 
the  principal  works  of  Gassendi  and  Des  Cartes 
were  in  Latin,  we  have  nothing  to  do  with  them 
here,  except  to  say  that  both  denied  the  authority 
of  Aristotle,  and  proclaimed  the  emptiness  of  the 
scholastic  philosophy,  though  differing  widely  from 
each  other  in  the  views  with  which  they  sought  to 
replace  the  old  system  of  thought.  Des  Cartes, 
however,  in  his  Discours  de  la  Methode,  which  ap- 
peared shortly  after  the  Cid,  brings  himself  within 
our  scope,  as  a  producer  in  the  mother-tongue.  The 
fundamental  principle  of  his  thought,  as  there 
set  forth,  is  to  know  himself  in  order  that  he  may 
arrive  at  the  knowledge  of  Grod  and  of  nature.  He 
pursues  his  speculations  in  clear  and  simple  lan- 
guage, severely  simple  and  direct. 

The  Jansenist  controversy  led  to  the  persecution 
of  the  Port  Royalists,  and  thia  to  the  brilliant  de- 
fence of  that  school  of  religious  belief  by  Pascal.  It 
wik)  "be  fitting,  therefore,  as  an  introduction  to 
Pascal's  literary  career,  to  give  a  brief  account  of 
Port  Royal. 


From  Richelieu  to  Louis  XIV.  93 

Port  Royal,  sometimes  called  Port  Royal  des 
Champs,  was  in  its  beginning  a  convent  about  nine 
miles  south  of  Versailles,  attached  to  the  Benedict- 
ine order,  and  founded  in  1204.  In  the  course  of 
time,  its  discipline,  like  that  of  many  other  such 
establishments,  had  become  greatly  relaxed.  About 
the  year  1608,  Marie-Angelique  Arnauld  becoming 
Abbess,  reformed  its  discipline  and  gave  it  such 
fame  that  many  noble  ladies  began  to  reside  in  the 
neighborhood,  to  share  in  its  earnest  devotions.  In 
the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  Antoine 
Arnauld,  a  learned  doctor  of  the  Sorbonne.  accom- 
panied by  three  of  the  famous  Lemaistre  family,  as 
well  as  by  several  other  men  of  learning  and  purity, 
took  up  his  residence  there.  His  mother,  his  sister 
the  Abbess,  five  other  sisters,  and  six  of  his  nieces 
were  already  members  of  the  establishment.  The 
Arnaulds,  the  Lemaistres,  Nicole,  and  the  Abbe  de 
Saint-Cyran,  living  near  the  convent,  cultivating 
their  little  gardens,  teaching  the  young,  and  com- 
posing valuable  wo*ks,  soon  won  for  Port  Royal  the 
reputation  of  being  a  school  of  virtue  and  learning. 
Racine  was  one  of  the  pupils  of  this  school  of  puri- 
tans in  the  bosom  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  Pascal, 
whose  sister  and  niece  were  members  of  the  con- 
vent, numbered  himself  as  in  spirit  one  of  the  little 
fraternity  outside  its  walls,  though  his  work  and 
life  were  elsewhere. 

For  many  years  Port  Royal  had  the  highest 
renown  and  success  as  a  useful  institution.  But, 
long  before  its  arbitrary  and  cruel  destruction  in 
1710,  its  troubles  began,  in  the  condemnation  by 
the  Sorbonne,  under  the  influence  of  the  Jesuits,  of 
Saint-Cyran  and  then  of  Arnauld,  as  adherents  of 
the  Jansenist  school  of  religious  belief. 

Pascal  now  took  the  field  in  defence  of  Arnaukf, 
producing  his  famous  Lettres  ecrites  a  un  Provincial. 
The  first,  second,  and  third  of  these  letters  are  de- 
voted to  proving  the  identity  of  his  friend's  doc- 
trine with  that  of  St.  Augustine.  The  others,  how- 


94:  French  Literature. 

ever,  are  those  which  caught  the  attention  of  the 
public  and  won  him  the  fame  of  stinging  and 
withering  irony  which  still  clings  to  his  name.  In 
these  he  attacks  the  system  of  casuistry  expounded 
by  the  great  Jesuit  doctors,  and  holds  the  order  up 
to  ridicule  as  masters  in  sophistry  and  teachers  of 
immorality.  "  The  Provincial  Letters " — I  quote 
from  a  paper  in  one  of  the  English  reviews — "  are, 
on  the  whole,  the  most  brilliant  collection  of  con- 
troversial letters  extant.  They  have  not  the 
rounded  finish,  the  concentration,  the  red-hot 
touches  of  sarcasm,  and  the  brief  and  occasional 
bursts  of  invective  darkening  into  sublimity  which 
distinguish  the  letters  ofJunius.  Nor  have  they 
the  profound  asides  of  reflection,  or  the  impatient 
power  of  passion,  or  the  masses  of  poetical  imagery 
to  be  found  in  Burke's  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,  and 
Letters  on  a  Regicide  Peace ;  but  they  excel  these 
and  all  epistolary  writings  in  dexterity  of  argument, 
in  power  of  irony,  in  light,  hurrying,  scorching 
satire,  a  '  fire  running  along  the  ground,'  in  grace  of 
motion,  and  in  Attic  salt  and  Attic  eloquence  of 
style." 

Geruzez  well  remarks  that  the  charm  and  power 
of  this  work  of  Pascal's,  even  with  the  readers  of 
our  own  time,  lie  quite  apart  from  the  original  dis- 
pute, that  no  one  cares  now  about  the  rights  of  the 
discussion  on  the  nature  of  grace,  but  that  we  can 
all  appreciate  and  enjoy  the  masterly  appeal  in 
behalf  of  truth  against  error,  which  the  eloquent 
genius  of  Pascal,  passing  beyond  the  particular 
thesis  he  has  set  himself  to  defend, utters  in  passage 
after  passage  of  transcendent  beauty.  As  to  the 
j  ustice  of  all  his  charges  against  the  Jesuits,  it  is 
not  my  province  to  decide  that  question,  any  more 
than  in  the  case  of  his  bitter  onslaught  on  the 
memory  of  Montaigne  as  a  teacher  of  skepticism. 

Blaise  Pascal,  born  in  1623,  was,  like  his  friends, 
the  Arnaulds,  from  Auvergne.  As  a  mere  boy  he 
distinguished  himself  by  his  amazing  proficiency  in 


From  Richelieu  to  Lords  XIV.  95 

mathematics,  and  in  early  youth  as  an  experimenter 
in  physics.  His  intercourse  with  the  distinguished 
Jausenist  preacher,  the  Abbe  Guillebert,  early  led 
him  to  join  the  ascetic  school  of  which  he  later 
became  the  ablest  defender.  The  Provinciales,  as 
his  famous  letters  are  sometimes  called,  were  writ- 
ten under  the  pseudonym  of  Louis  de  Montalte.  His 
other  great  work,  the  Pensees  sur  la  Religion,  was 
left  unfinished ;  but,  even  in  their  incomplete 
shape,  these  fragmentary  efforts  to  construct  a  body 
of  thought  strong  enough  to  cope  with  the  argu- 
ments of  atheists  have  excited  the  admiration  of 
every  generation  of  readers.  The  battering-ram 
Pascal  brings  to  bear  against  the  stronghold  of 
atheism  is  framed  of  negations  that  confront  and 
crush  the  negations  of  human  pride.  He,  the 
brightest  and  acutest  ef  men  in  pure  intellectual 
force  and  subtlety,  communes  with  himself,  pushes 
his  thought  back  to  its  utmost  bounds,  sees  and 
marks  the  inexorable  limitations,  and  forces  his 
mind  to  gaze  into  the  impenetrable  beyond,  until  it 
shrinks  back,  aghast  and  appalled  at  the  narrowness 
of  its  range  and  the  boundlessness  and  immensity 
of  what  stretches  beyond  its  grasp.  It  is  thus  that 
he  abases  the  human  intellect  and  step  by  step 
proves  its  littleness  and  the  futility  of  its  efforts  to 
penetrate  the  mystery  that  surrounds  us.  Bringing 
his  mathematics  to  bear  upon  the  matter  in  and 
around  man,  and  forcing  the  imagination  to  compass 
what  it  can  of  the  infinitely  great  and  the  infinitely 
small,  he  drives  proud  reason,  beaten  from  all  its 
shelters,  to  plead  to  faith  for  help. 

Pascal's  wretched  health  prevented  him  from 
grouping  these  wondrous  Sibylline  leaves  into  a 
harmonious  whole,  and  he  died  at  the  early  age  of 
thirty-nine,  in  Paris,  in  the  year  1662. 

His  friends,  those  Christian  mystics  who  made 
up  the  Port  Eoyal  school,  deserve  some  special 
mention.  Antoine  Arnauld  was  one  of  twenty 
noble  children  of  a  famous  lawyer.  Jansenist, 


96  French  Literature. 

heart  and  soul,  be  joined  Nicole  in  writing  a  mas- 
sive treatise  on  La,  Perpetuite  de  la  Foi.  Afterwards 
when  an  exile  among  Protestant  fellow-exiles,  he 
assailed  them  in  his  Apologie  des  Cathotiques. 
Nicole  was  Arnauld's  faithful  auxiliary.  When 
not  compelled  by  the  ardor  of  his  friends  to  engage 
in  controversy,  he  pleased  his  own  peaceful  nature 
by  composing  his  Essais  de  Morale.  Antoine  Le- 
maistre,  son  of  one  of  the  sisters  of  Araauld;  his 
brother,  Lemaistre  de  Saci,  translator  of  the  Bible ; 
Claude  Lancelot,  one  of  Kacine's  instructors;  to- 
gether with  De  Pontis,  Du  Fosse,  and  Fontaine, 
were  all  scholarly  men,  engaged  in  the  production 
of  grammars  and  text-books  on  logic,  besides  their 
other  works. 

Between  the  death  of  Kichelieu  and  the  personal 
reign  of  Louis  XIV. — that  is,  during  the  period  of 
Cardinal  Mazarin's  struggle  with  the  leaders  of  the 
Fronde  and  the  years  of  his  final  triumph — no 
great  literary  event  occurred,  besides  the  publica- 
tion of  Pascal's  great  controversial  work.  There 
was  nothing  about  the  court  of  Anne  of  Austria  to 
encourage  literature,  nothing  in  the  nature  of 
Mazarin  to  evoke  genius.  Even  the  great  soul  of 
Corneille  seemed  to  shrink,  and  the  works  he  put 
forth  at  this  time  are  not  those  by  which  posterity 
knows  him. 

What  really  belong  to  this  period  are  the  inter- 
minable romances  of  Mademoiselle  de  Scuderi,  in 
which  history  and  passion  are  alike  falsified;  and 
the  sonnets  and  madrigals  and  abortive  epics  of  an 
age  of  artificial  taste.  But,  laughable  as  the  char- 
acters and  conversations  of  these  long  narratives  are 
to  readers  of  our  day,  Madeleine  de  Scuderi,  holds 
an  important  place  in  the  history  of  literature,  as 
the  founder  of  the  heroic  romance.  It  is  true,  she 
had  fore-runners,  but  her  stories  were  greatly  su- 
perior in  many  ways  to  theirs,  and  may  be  said  to 
have  established  that  class  of  work  as  having  a 
just  claim  to  a  recognized  place  in  literature. 


From  Richelieu  to  Louis  XIV.  97 

The  pastoral  romance  of  D'urfe  was,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  succeeded  by  the  heroic.  To 
translations  from  the  old  Greek  romances  and 
the  Spanish  was  added,  in  the  days  of  the  Queen 
Mother,  Marie  de  Medici,  the  Endymion  of  Gom- 
bault,  who  in  that  strange  idyllic  romance  allegor- 
ized the  favor  with  which  the  Queen-Regent  her- 
self looked  upon  him.  After  Gombault  came  Gom- 
berville — or,  to  give  him  the  benefit  of  his  name 
and  titles  in  full,  Marin  Le  Roy,  Sieur  de  Gorn- 
berville  et  du  Parc-aux-Chevaux — who,  between 
1621  and  1651,  published  La  Caritee,  Polexandre, 
La  Cytheree,  and  Le  Jeune  Alcidiane.  Polexandre 
is  considered  the  best. 

There  was  still,  however,  an  air  of  fairyland 
about  the  prose  romance.  It  was  Gautier  de  Costes, 
Seigneur  de  La  Calprenede,  who  was  to  give  it 
more  likeness  to  actual  life.  He  was  on  duty  at 
court  as  a  young  guardsman  when  the  public  had 
the  first  hint  of  his  story-telling  powers.  It  was 
in  the  time  of  Anne  of  Austria,  and  this  queen 
complaining  that  her  maids  of  honor  were  tardy  in 
their  service,  one  of  them  excused  herself  and  com- 
panions by  saying  that  there  was  in  the  first  hall 
a  gentleman  whom  one  could  never  tire  of  listen- 
ing to.  The  queen  had  La  Calprenede  summoned 
to  her  presence,  and  prayed  him  to  tell  her  one  of 
those  tales  he  told  so  well.  The  young  Gascon 
promptly  complied  with  the  request,  the  Queen  was 
delighted,  and  a  pension  was  at  once  given  him. 

He  who  could  please  a  queen  naturally  felt  that 
it  would  be  easy  for  him  to  please  the  public.  Ac- 
cordingly he  set  to  work,  and  it  was  not  long  be- 
fore his  teeming  brain  poured  forth  ten  volumes  of  a 
romance,  the  scene  of  which  is  laid  in  Persia  during 
the  time  of  Alexander.  This  is  his  Cassandre. 
There  is  no  local  color,  no  historic  reality,  but  we 
are  treated  to  a  long  series  of  romantic  loves,  tre- 
mendous combats,  magnificent  tourneys,  the  carry- 
ing-ofF  of  princesses  by  ardent  but  respectful  lovers, 
7 


98  French  Literature. 

and  all  manner  of  exciting  incidents.  The  charac- 
ters, it  is  true,  are  not  people  of  the  time  of  Alex- 
ander, but  they  are  real  for  all  that,  and  they  talk 
well.  La  Calprenede  wrote  another,  the  Cleopatre, 
which  occupied  twelve  volumes;  and  he  began  a 
Pharamond,  of  which  he  printed  only  seven  vol- 
umes. Pierre  de  Vaumoriere,  the  author  of  the 
Grand  Stipion,  afterwards  finished  it  with  five 
more  volumes. 

Madeleine  de  Scuderi  came  to  Paris  with  her 
brave  but  amusingly  boastful  brother,  George,  in 
1630.  She,  though  more  sensible  than  he,  was 
also  vain  of  a  supposed  family  grandeur  in  the  past. 
Demogeot  remarks :  "  She  used  always  to  say, 
'Since  the  downfall  of  our  house'; — you  would 
have  said  that  she  was  speaking  of  the  overthrow 
of  the  Greek  Empire.  She  was  tall,  thin,  and 
dark,  with  a  very  long  face.  Madame  Cornuel 
used  to  say  that  Providence  had  made  that  girl 
sweat  ink,  since  she  was  to  spread  so  much  of  it  on 
paper.  For  a  long  time  her  brother  kept  up  the 
most  amusingly  jealous  practices  about  her.  Some- 
times he  shut  her  up  entirely,  and  would  suffer  no 
one  to  see  her.  She  was  not  able  to  see  whom  she 
wished  even  when  forty  years  old.  Madeleine 
took  all  this  treatment  with  a  good  grace.  Perhaps 
she  was  flattered  by  it." 

This  brother  and  sister  were  really  very  much 
attached  to  each  other,  and  it  was  to  the  advantage 
of  their  literary  work  that  they  were  evidently 
always  living  a  romance  in  imagination  before  they 
undertook  to  write  one.  Madeleine  herself  wrote 
under  cover  of  her  brother's  name.  George  was  a 
dramatic  author.  Madeleine  published  Ibrahim, 
her  first  book,  in  1635.  It  was  no  advance  on 
Gomberville,  and  did  not  reach  the  merit  of  La 
Calprenede.  But  her  study  of  the  refined  manners 
and  lofty  thought  of  the  Hotel  Rambouillet,  to 
which  she  was  admitted,  gave  her  something  real 
to  paint.  In  her  Artam&ne,  ou  le  grand  Cyrus  and 


From   Richelieu    to   Louis  XIV.  99 

CUlie,  under  the  disguise  of  Persians  and  Romans, 
she,  to  their  great  delight,  painted  the  haunters  of 
the  ruelles  of  "Cleomire,"  as  she  styled  the  brilliant 
Marquise  in  the  seventh  volume  of  the  Cyrus. 

If  Madame  de  Sevigne  reproached  herself,  and 
to  no  purpose  too,  for  pouring  over  La  Calprenede's 
books,  Madeleine  de  Scuderi's  were  to  waste  far 
more  time.  They  became  the  rage  everywhere. 
In  England,  we  find  old  Samuel  Pepys  scolding  his 
wife  and  grumbling  at  her  in  his  secret  diary  for 
her  devotion  to  them.  There  is,  in  truth,  much  in 
the  writings  of  this  dark-skinned  old  maid,  of 
which  a  woman  even  in  this  age  might  well  be 
proud.  To  us,  indeed,  her  stories  are  tiresome, 
prolix,  unnatural.  But,  besides  her  admirable  por- 
traiture of  the  choicest  society  of  her  own  time, 
she  has  some  noble  passages  on  the  true  place  of 
woman  in  society,  some  just  and  judicious  reflec- 
tions that  have  their  value  even  now.  Her  style, 
too,  is  flexible  and  flowing,  with  a  grace  and  deli- 
cacy about  it  from  time  to  time  which  mark  the 
woman  to  whose  ears  the  easy  conversation  of 
the  Rambouillet  circle  was  familiar. 

Chapelain's  farcical  epic,  La  Pucelle,  I  have  al- 
ready mentioned  in  passing.  Another  epic  of  the 
sort  that  "  neither  gods  nor  men  can  abide,"  was 
the  Clovis  of  Desmarets,  Richelieu's  favorite.  An- 
other was  the  Moise  sauve  of  Saint- Amant,  who, 
however,  had  some  merit.  Another  was  the  Saint 
Louis  of  the  Pere  Lemoyne,  like  the  others  full  of 
passages  marked  by  wretched  taste. 

Amid  the  light  literature  of  burlesque  verse, 
slashing  lampoons,  and  bitter  satires,  provoked  by 
the  war  of  the  Fronde,  were  the  letters  of  the  doc- 
tor Guy-Patin  against  Cardinal  Mazarin,  which 
are  still  of  some  value  as  unconscious  contributions 
to  contemporary  history,  as  they  were  written 
solely  for  private  eyes.  Mazarin,  who  did  not  con- 
cern himself  for  literature,  had  but  one  defender 
among  literary  men — a  man  who  did  not  like  to 


100  French  Literature. 

think  with  other  men.  This  was  Cyrano  de  Ber- 
gerac.  In  -his  Leltre  aux  frondevrs,  he  makes 
an  especial  butt  of  Paul  Scarron,  the  burlesque 
assailant  of  Mazarin. 

Poor  Scarron,  with  liis  deformed  and  suffering 
body — travesty  was  natural  to  him.  The 
Erieide  travestie  is  not  a  great  work,  in  any 
sense  of  the  word,  but  there  is  seme  fun  in  it.  The 
trouble  is  that  one  grows  very  tired  of  rending 
long  in  a  caricature  spun  out  to  so  inordinate  a 
length.  But  Scarron  does  better  work  in  his 
Roman  coinique  and  his  Nouvelles.  His  comedies 
also  were  amusing,  and  the  young  King  enjoyed 
them  so  much  that  he  had  one  of  them,  UHeritier 
ridicule,  performed  three  times  in  one  day.  It  was 
the  widow  of  this  poor  old  pain-tortured  merry- 
maker for  the  young  prince,  Fran9oise  d'Aubigne, 
who  was  to  be  in  after  days  the  secretly  wedded 
wife  and  the  nurse  of  the  worn-out  King,  under  the 
name  of  Madame  de  Maintenon. 

But,  before  we  begin  with  Louis  XIV.  and 
Moilere,  the  special  glory  of  his  age,  a  few  words 
must  be  said  of  Mazarin's  solitary  defender,  the 
fore-runner  of  Moliere,  Fontenelle,  and  Voltaire, 
and  a  great  admirer  of  the  philosopher  Des  Cartes. 

Savinien  Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  one  of  those  big 
Gascons,  to  whom  France  has  owed  some  of  its 
most  characteristic  types  of  wit,  was  born  in  the 
same  year  with  Moliere,  1620.  From  his  single 
comedy,  Le  Pedant  Joue,  Moliere,  who  had  been 
his  schoolmate  and  friend,  borrowed  largely  when 
he  came  to  write  Les  Fourberies  de  Scapin.  It  was 
the  earliest  prose-comedy  in  the  language,  and  has 
at  least  the  merits  of  great  exuberance  of  mirth 
and  much  lively  action.  Had  Bergerac  not  died  at 
the  age  of  thirty-five,  he  might  have  given  the  lit- 
erature another  writer  of  comedy,  not  perhaps 
worthy  to  be  placed  beside  Moliere,  but  at  all 
events  ranking  just  below  him.  He  had  pre- 
riously  written  his  single  tragedy,  La  Mort  d'Agrip- 


From  Richelieu  to  Louis  XIV.  101 

pine,  in  which  the  "unities"  are  very  carefully 
observed.  His  really  great  works,  however,  were  his 
Histoire  cwnique  des  Estats  et  Empires  de  la  Lune, 
and  his  Estats  et  Empires  du  Soleil,  both  of  which  were 
in  1687  translated  into  English  by  A.  Lovell,  and  are 
said  to  have  influenced  Swift  in  his  production  of 
Grulliver's  Travels.  These  really  able  and  most 
entertaining  satires  are  not,  however,  so  cynical  as 
those  of  Swift. 

De  Bergerac's  life-* was  even  better  than  his 
books;  for,  though  wild  and  dissipated  at  his  first 
coming  to  Paris,  and  engaged  because  of  his  great 
strength  and  courage  in  numerous  duels — never, 
however,  as  principal,  the  seconds  in  those  days 
fighting  for  their  principals  along  with  them — he 
became  before  his  death  a  thoroughly  noble  and 
unselfish  character.  He  served  also  in  the  army,  as 
well  as  in  duels  for  his  friends,  was  shot  through  the 
body  at  the  siege  of  Mousson,  and  at  that  of  Arras 
was  pierced  in  the  neck.  Indeed,  he  died  from  the 
results  of  his  wounds.  His  friend  and  old  school- 
mate, Le  Bret,  published  his  works  after  his  death, 
prefixing  a  sketch  of  his  career.  De  Bergerac  died 
in  1655. 

Two  years  after  his  birth,  appeared  a  comic  ro- 
mance, which  deserves  some  mention.  This  was 
the  Histoire  comique  de  Francion,  a  book  immensely 
popular  in  its  day.  The  author  was  Charles  Sorel, 
Sieur  de  Sauvigny,  a  fast  friend  of  the  satirical 
Doctor  Guy-Patin,  Mazarin's  inveterate  enemy. 
His  book  was  a  strong  protest  against  the  affecta- 
tions and  the  "King  Cambyses's  vein"  of  the pre- 
cieuse  school  of  writers.  In  1628,  when  the  Astree 
was  at  the  height  of  its  popularity,  he  returned  to 
the  charge  with  a  clever  and  piquant  parody  of  that 
romance,  entitled  the  Berger  extravagant.  Later 
still,  when  the  Grand  Cyrus  appeared,  full  of  care- 
ful portraitures  of  the  great  people  of  the  court 
and  the  frequenters  of  Madame  de  Kambouillet's 
ruelles;  Sorel  put  forth  his  Descriptwn  de  Vile  des 


102  French  Literature. 

portraitures,  making  fun  of  the  passion  for  sketch- 
ing pen-and-ink  portraits  which  had  seized  the 
grandees  and  their  imitators. 

The  personal  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  begins  with 
Mazarin's  death  in  1661.  Before  that  event,  Cor- 
neille's  greatest  works  had  been  produced  and  the 
French  drama  was  an  established  fact.  Pascal  had 
put  forth  his  masterpiece  of  irony  and  of  acute 
reasoning.  D'Urfe,  Gombault,  Gomberville,  La 
Calprenede  and  Madeleine  Scude'ii  had  inaugurated 
imaginative  fiction.  Sorel,  De  Bergerac  and  Scar- 
ron  had  presented  life  and  manners  as  looked  at 
from  the  comic  and  satirical  side.  Madame  de 
Eambouillet  and  her  friends  had  purified  conversa- 
tion, and  elevated  the  tone  of  society,  besides  cul- 
tivating in  the  higher  circles  a  taste  for  literary 
skill.  France,  under  the  rule  of  Eichelieu,  and  to 
some  extent  even  under  that  of  Mazarin,  was  pre- 
paring for  the  days  of  peace  and  courtly  leisure 
which  under  the  Great  King  were  to  shine  with 
more  than  ordinary  brightness  in  many  forms  of 
literature. 

The  Memoirs  which  belong  to  the  time  of  Eiche- 
lieu, are  those  of '  Lavieuyille,  of  Henri  de  Eohan, 
of  the  mare'chal  d'Estres,  of  Pont-Chartrain,  of 
De*agent,  of  Bassompiere  (who  wrote  his  in  the  Bas- 
tile),  of  Monglat,  of  Conrart  and  of  the  Cardinal 
himself. 


Moti&rc.  108 


VIII. 

MOLIERE. 

MOLIERE  is  the  great  master  of  comedy  for 
modern  literature,  as  Aristophanes  was  for  the 
ancient.  He  is  more  than  this:  he  is  more  purely 
a  comic  writer  than  any  other  great  master  in  the 
history  of  literature.  For,  there  are  flashes  of  ex- 
quisite poety  in  Aristophanes,  while  in  Moliere  all 
is  pure  comedy.  His  business  is  to  make  you 
laugh,  and  he  does  it.  There  are  other  writers,  both 
of  the  ancient  and  the  modern  world,  whose  works 
are  purely  comic,  Plautus  and  Terence  in  Latin, 
Goldoni  in  Italian,  Beauinarchais  in  French,  Sheri- 
dan in  English  ;  but  Moliere  excels  them  all  in  the 
power  of  producing  laughter. 

"  Of  all  the  French  dramatists,"  says  Bulwer-Lytton, 
"he  is  the  only  one  whose  genius  is  as  conspicuous  to 
foreign  nations  as  it  is  to  his  own.  Like  Shakespeare,  he  is 
for  all  time  and  for  all  races.  A  piercing  observer  of  the 
society  around  him,  he  selects  from  that  society  types  the 
least  socially  conventional.  His  very  men  of  fashion  are 
never  out  of  fashion.  Where  most  he  excels  all  that  is 
left  to  us  of  the  comedy  of  the  ancients  is  where  his  in- 
vention most  escapes  from  its  influence,  and  reveals  those 
truths  of  a  poetry  almost  tragic,  which  lie  half  in  light, 
half  in  shadow,  on  the  serious  side  of  humor.  Here,  the 
comedy  of  the  Misanthrope  is  without  a  rival  as  to  con- 
ception of  character  and  delicacy  of  treatment,  though  in 
point  of  dramatic  construction  and  vigor  of  style  the 
Tartuffe  has  been  held  to  surpass  it,  '  The  exposition  of 
Tartiiffe,'  says  Goethe,  •  is  without  its  equal ;  it  is  the 
grandest  and  best  of  its  kind  ; ' ' 

But,  without  lingering  to  trace  generalities,  let  us 
sketch  as  rapidly  as  possible  the  career  of  this  great 


104  French  Literature. 

literary  artist  and  unfold,  as  we  go,  the  methods  of 
his  work  and  the  qualities  it  exhibits. 

Jean-Baptiste  Poquelin,  whom  the  world  knows 
as  Moliere,  was  born  in  Paris,  on  the  15th  January, 
1622.  His  father  was  an  upholsterer,  and  the  son 
was  brought  up  with  the  view  of  succeeding  him 
in  the  business.  His  grandfather,  however,  had  a 
great  fondness  for  the  theatre,  and  used  to  take  him 
often  to  see  the  play.  He  soon  grew  into  a  passion 
for  studies  of  a  more  intellectual  order  than  those 
needed  to  qualify  him  for  carrying  on  his  father's 
business.  Aided  by  the  support  of  his  grandfather, 
he  gained  permission  from  his  father  to  devote  him- 
self to  such  studies  at  the  College  of  Clermont, 
superintended  by  the  Jesuits.  Here  he  not  only 
received  a  scholarly  education,  but  formed  associa- 
tions of  great  value  to  him  in  after  life.  Among 
his  schoolfellows  and  warm  friends  was  the  Prince 
Armand  de  Conti,  brother  of  the  great  Conde.  By 
the  intervention  of  Chapelle,  his  attached  friend,  he 
was  also  able  to  take  lessons  from  the  philosopher 
Gasseudi.  The  teachings  of  Gassendi  bore  fruit  in 
two  directions.  We  find  traces  of  Gassendi's  in- 
structions in  the  Femmes  Savantes  and  elsewhere 
among  the  plays  of  Moliere,  while  a  more  immedi- 
ate result  of  this  philosopher's  influence  was 
Moliere's  undertaking  to  translate  Lucretius,  which 
he  did  partly  in  verse  and  partly  in  prose.  This 
manuscript  has,  however,  been  lost.  Among  other 
schoolmates  of  Moliere  were  Bernier  the  traveler, 
Hesnault  the  poet  and  satirist  of  the  minister  Col- 
bert, and  Cyrano  de  Bergerac  the  fore-runner  of 
Swift  in  the  character  of  Gulliver. 

Moliere's  first  employment  on  leaving  college 
was  the  place  his  father  had  held  of  valet-de- 
chambre-tapissier  to  the  king.  In  virtue  of  this 
office  he  followed  the  court  to  Narbonne.  But  this 
position  was  so  distasteful  to  him,  that  he  turned 
away  from  it  to  the  study  of  the  law.  His  old 
passion  for  the  theatre,  however,  drew  him  away 


Moliere.  105 

me  IAU,  and  in  1645  he  is  to  be  found  in 
Paris  at  the  head  of  a  troop  of  actors,  of  whom  he 
soon  formed  a  permanent  company. 

A  story  is  told  of  his  first  teacher's  coming  to 
dissuade  him  from  the  life  of  an  actor,  and  of  Mo- 
liere's  so  eloquently  exalting  that  profession  in  his 
defence  of  it  as  to  induce  the  old  man  to  join  his 
company  and  play  those  parts  called  lesperes  nobles. 

His  friend,  the  Prince  de  Conti,  also  tried  to  dis- 
suade him,  offering  him  a  place  at  court,  but  he 
pleaded  with  him  in  vain.  His  vocation  emphati- 
cally called  him.  In  going  upon  the  stage,  the 
young  comedian  abandoned  his  paternal  name  of 
Poquelin  and  adopted  that  of  Moliere.  So,  in  a 
later  age,  did  young  Arouet  take  the  surname  of 
Voltaire. 

Performing  at  first  in  the  faubourgs  of  Paris,  and 
then  in  the  provinces,  his  company  led  the  life  of 
strolling  players;  nor  is  anything  known  of  the 
plays  produced  in  those  early  days  by  Moliere, 
beyond  the  names  of  some  of  them.  For  twelve 
years,  only  an  occasional  glimpse  can  be  caught  of 
him  in  the  records  of  the  time.  During  all  this 
time  of  preliminary  training,  besides  what  his  sharp 
eye  caught  of  men  and  manners,  he  must  have  read 
much.  For,  his  works  show  a  thorough  knowledge 
of  Plautus  and  Terence  and  of  the  Italian  and 
Spanish  comedies. 

But,  at  last,  his  old  schoolfellow,  Prince  Armand 
de  Conti,  sent  for  him  to  give  representations  at 
the  palace.  The  king  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
present  on  the  first  occasion;  and  Moliere's  players 
had  been  patronized  for  some  time  by  the  Prince 
de  Conti,  the  Due  d'Epernon,  and  Philippe  d'Or- 
leans,  before  Louis  XIV.  perceived  the  merit  ot  the 
young  comedian.  The  performance  of  the  Docteur 
Amonreux  took  the  monarch's  fancy,  and  he  author- 
ized Moliere  to  establish  his  company  in  Paris  and  to 
perform  at  the  Theatre  du  Petit -Bourbon,  alternntely 
with  the  Italian  comedians. 


106  French  Literature. 

Moli&re  had  meanwhile  been  going  through  some 
of  those  love-experiences  which  he  has  so  largely 
painted  in  his  plays.  Like  Goldoni,  he  had  some 
unfortunate  haps  in  his  affairs  of  the  heart,  and, 
like  him,  he  drew  on  his  own  personal  experience 
for  some  of  the  situations  in  his  comedies.  His 
first  passion,  which  was  for  an  actress  named  Mad- 
eleine Bejart,  gave  way  to  a  deep  and  unreturned 
devotion  to  another  member  of  his  company, 
Mademoiselle  Duparc,  a  heartless  beauty,  a  wor- 
shiper of  rank,  and  a  despiser  of  the  comedian's 
humble  social  position.  This  scorn  of  one  to  whom 
he  had  poured  out  his  whole  heart  filled  Moliere 
with  profound  sadness. 

His  solace  was  the  devoted  friendship  of  Mad- 
emoiselle  de  Brie,  who  loved  him  with  the  same 
hopeless  passion  with  which  he  had  been  inspired 
by  Mademoiselle  Duparc.  She  became,  under  his 
teaching  and  with  the  motive  of  pleasing  him  and 
doing  his  genius  honor,  an  accomplished  actress  and 
a  great  favorite  with  the  public.  She  is  described 
as  "  tall,  slender,  and  graceful ;  noble  in  her  car- 
riage, and  natural  in  all  her  attitudes,  with  some- 
thing particularly  delicate  in  her  face  and  features, 
which  rendered  her  most  fitting  for  the  part  of  an 
ingenue.  Her  eyes  possessed  a  peculiar  charm, 
derived  from  their  mingled  expression  of  candor 
and  tenderness.  She  was  more  intelligent  than 
witty,  and  had  not  a  shadow  of  coquetry." 

She  had  the  quickness  to  perceive  the  deep  melan- 
choly which  oppressed  Moliere  under  his  calm  ex- 
terior, won  him  over  to  confide  in  her,  and  consoled 
him  so  sweetly  that  in  process  of  time  he  was 
wholly  cured  of  his  passion  for  Mademoiselle 
Duparc.  More  than  this — he  had  yielded  to  the 
charm  of  his  sweet  consoler,  and  was  now  in  love 
with  her.  For  several  years  they  were  very  happy 
in  their  mutual  love,  though  for  some  unknown 
reason  they  did  not  marry;  and,  in  the  end, 
Moliere's  heart  was  won  away  from  her  by 


Moliere.  107 

Armande  Bejart,  a  younger  sister  of  that  Madeleine 
Bejart  for  whom  Moliere  had  felt  so  warm  a  passion 
before. 

This  attractive  but  worthless  coquette,  witty  and 
gifced  as  an  actress,  completely  stole  away  the 
dramatist's  heart.  Mademoiselle  de  Brie,  seeing 
his  total  subjection  to  the  charms  of  the  younger 
woman,  sadly  resigned  herself  to  the  painful  sepa- 
ration. Moliere,  at  the  age  of  forty-one,  married  the 
young  girl,  more  than  twenty  years  younger  than 
himself.  Mademoiselle  de  Brie  continued  to  be  his 
faithful  friend,  and  after  his  death  it  was  her 
greatest  pleasure  to  play  those  parts  he  had  created 
for  her.  She  kept  her  youthful  appearance  to  the 
last,  and  on  one  occasion  when  at  sixty  she  thought 
it  unfitting  for  her  to  play  the  part  of  a  girl  of  six- 
teen and  gave  up  to  another  the  part  of  Agnes  in 
the  Ecole  des  Femmes,  the  audience  insisted  so 
loudly  on  her  resuming  it  that  the  manager  was 
forced  to  send  for  her. 

It  would  have  been  well  for  Moliere  had  he  re- 
mained faithful  to  this  faithful  woman.  His  infatu- 
ation was  punished  by  the  most  shameless  infidelity 
on  the  part  of  the  frail  creature  whom  he  had  so 
foolishly  married.  As  an  actress  she  brought  all 
the  unprincipled  gallants  of  the  court  to  her  feet. 
About  three  years  after  the  marriage,  a  violent 
(|'iarrel  ended  in  their  separation  for  some  six  or 
seven  years.  During  all  this  time  they  met  con- 
stantly in  the  theatre,  playing  in  the  same  pieces. 

Some  of  his  best  plays — many  of  them  founded 
on  the  misfortunes  of  husbands — were  produced  at 
this  time.  In  the  Afisanthrope,  which  was  espe- 
cially a  revelation  of  his  own  troubles,  Armande 
played  CelimZne,  Mademoiselle  de  Brie,  Eliante, 
and  Moli&re,  Akeste.  It  is  said  that  one  night 
Eliante  was  eo  captivating  that  the  dramatist  quite 
forgot  his  griefs  as  a  betrayed  husband  in  the  re- 
turn of  his  old  tenderness  for  the  first  love.  His 
health  failing  for  a  time,  Mademoiselle  de  Brie 


108  French  Literature. 

watched  over  him  with  all  the  devotion  his  wife 
ought  to  have  shown.  But  a  piece  of  double 
treachery  destroyed  the  small  share  of  happiness 
Moliere  was  now  enjoying. 

Baron,  the  finest  actor  of  his  day,  brought  up  by 
Moliere  and  hitherto  hated  and  persecuted  by 
Armande,  while  acting  the  part  of  Cupid  in  the 
ballet  of  Psyche,  produced  conjointly  by  Moliere 
and  Corneille,  looked  so  handsome  that  he  changed 
Psyche's  sentiments  from  hatred  to  love.  Forget- 
ting the  gratitude  he  owed  to  Moliere,  Baron  re- 
turned this  sudden  passion.  What  was  worse,  the 
worthless  wife  was  so  lovely  a  Psyche,  that  Moliere 
sank  once  more  under  her  spells.  They  were 
reconciled;  but  Moliere  was  soon  forced  to  admrff 
her  utter  worthlessness,  and  was  more  unhappy 
than  ever.  His  health  declined,  and  soon  gave 
way  altogether. 

While  these  troubles  of  the  heart  were  going  on, 
works  of  wonderful  variety  and  unrivaled  humor 
were  pouring  from  his  prolific  brain.  LEtourdi 
and  Le  Depit  Amoureux  he  wrote  during  the  five 
years  of  his  happy  life  with  Mademoiselle  de  Brie, 
before  his  marriage.  Then  came  Les  Prtyieuses 
Ridicules,  produced  to  satirize  the  absurdities  and 
affectations  of  those  who  were  imitating  the  literary 
coterie  that  gathered  at  the  Hotel  Rambouillet. 

This  was  caught  at  directly  as  heralding  the 
coming  of  a  new  era  in  comedy.  At  its  first  repre- 
sentation, an  old  man  cried :  "  Courage,  Moliere  I 
voila  la  veritable  comediel  "  Menage,  the  critic,  said 
to  Chapelain,  the  poet,  as  they  were  going  out  of 
the  theatre  together:  "Henceforth  (as  St.  Eemi 
said  to  Clovis)  we  must  burn  what  we  have  wor- 
shiped and  worship  what  we  have  burned."  This 
was  in  1659.  The  next  year,  appeared  Sganarelle, 
and,  the  next,  .Uficole  des  Mar  is,  partly  founded  on 
the  Adelphi  of  Terence,  with  Don  Garde  de  Navarre 
and  Les  Fdcheux. 

After  his  marriage  he  wrote  LEcole  des  Femmes 


Moltire.  109 

and  La  Critique  de  Tecole  des  Femmes.  Then  came 
the  Impromptu  de  Versailles,  Le  Manage  Force,  and 
La  Princesse  d1  Elide.  It  was  in  this  last  piece 
that  his  wife  captivated  the  courtiers  and  brought 
dishonor  upon  her  husband.  Between  1665  and 
1672,  he  produced  Don  Juan  ou  le  Festin  de  Pierre, 
L*  Amour  Medecin,  Le  Misanthrope,  Le  Medecin 
malgrt  lui,  Melicerte,  Le  Sicilian  ou  V  Amour 
Peintre,  Tartuffe,  Amphitryon,  Les  Amans  Magni- 
fiques,  Le  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme,  Les  Fourberies  de 
Scapin,  and  Psyche. 

Tartuffe,  his  masterpiece  in  the  opinion  of  most 
critics,  was  written  in  1664,  but  was  not  played 
publicly  until  1669,  as  its  performance  was  prohib- 
ited, the  Jesuits  making  strenuous  efforts  to  pre- 
vent its  representation.  It  proved  a  grand  success 
when  brought  at  last  before  the  public.  "The 
truth,  the  variety,  the  contrast  of  the  characters, 
the  exquisite  art  shown  in  the  management  of  the 
incidents,  the  abundance  of  the  sentiments,  and  the 
wonderful  alternatiors  of  feeling — laughter,  anger, 
indignation,  tenderness,  make  this,"  says  one  of  his 
critics,  "  truly  a  masterpiece." 

"  Tartuffe,"  says  Bulwer-Lytton,  "  is  not  a  comic 
character — he  is  almost  tragic,  for  he  creates  terror ; 
the  interest  he  gives  to  the  play  is,  in  our  vague 
consciousness  of  a  power,  intense,  secret,  and  unscru- 
pulous." Marmontel  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that 
"  not  one  of  the  principal  personages  in  the  Tartuffe 
is  comic  in  himself.  They  all  become  comic  by 
their  opposition." 

In  1672  Moliere  produced  Les  Femmes  Savantes. 
The  Academie  Franqaise  now  offered  him  a  chair 
in  that  learned  body,  on  condition  that  he  would 
no  longer  appear  as  an  actor.  He  declined,  although 
Boileau  and  his  other  friends  urged  him  to  accept. 
"  The  Academy,"  said  he  to  Boileau,  "  is  rich 
enough.  It  has  Corneille,  Racine,  yourself,  and 
many  other  great  writers.  I  am  but  a  comedian, 
and  I  will  not  insult  a  profession  I  like,  however 


110  French  Literature. 

humble  it  may  be,  by  abandoning  it  after  having 
followed  it  for  twenty -five  years.  My  honor  will 
not  allow  me  to  do  so." 

The  truth  was,  he  felt  himself  near  his  end,  and 
had  probably  the  true  workman's  wish  to  die  at  his 
work.  He  wrote  but  two  other  plays,  La  Comtesse 
d1  Escarbagnas  and  the  Afalade  Imaginairt;  the 
most  popular  of  all  his  pieces,  this  last.  It  was 
written  in  February,  1673.  On  the  17th  day  of  the 
month,  while  playing  the  part  of  Argan  in  the 
fourth  representation  of  the  play,  and  while  pro- 
nouncing the  juro  in  the  last  scene,  lie  burst  a 
blood-vessel.  Baron  took  him  home ;  and,  before 
his  wife,  whom  he  incessantly  called  for,  could  be 
brought  to  his  bedside,  he  died. 

As  he  died  in  a  state  of  excommunication,  the 
cure  of  St.  Eustache  refused  him  Christian  burial. 
His  widow  applied  to  the  Archbishop  of  Paris,  and, 
on  his  refusal,  to  the  King ;  but  the  selfishness  and 
superstition  of  that  monarch  made  him  receive  her 
with  marked  coldness,  though  Moliere  while  alive 
and  able  to  amuse  had  been  so  great  a  favorite  with 
him.  Still,  he  wrote  to  the  Archbishop,  desiring 
him  to  permit  burial  of  some  sort  in  consecrated 
ground.  "It  was  decided  that  &  handful  of  earth 
should  be  granted,  but  that  the  body  should  be  carried 
immediately  to  the  burying  ground,  and  not  remain 
in  the  church.  On  the  21st  of  February,  accord- 
ingly, the  coffin  was  transported  at  night,  by  two 
ecclesiastics,  to  the  cemetery  of  St.  Joseph  in  the 
Rue  Montmartre,  followed  by  more  than  two  hun- 
dred persons,  each  carrying  a  torch."  In  1792,  his 
remains  were  removed,  and  again  in  1817.  They 
were  placed  then  in  Pere-la-Chaise,  after  having 
received  the  honors  of  high  mass  in  the  church  of 
St.  Germaine  des  Pres. 

His  plays  may  be  divided  into  four  groups ;  first, 
the  pieces  with,  music  and  dancing  interspersed 
among  the  parts,  pastorals  or  masques  like  those  of 
Ben  Jonson ;  secondly,  farces  and  pasquinades ; 


Afoliere.  Ill 

thirdly,  comedies  of  the  simpler  type;  and  fourthly, 
the  more  complex  comedies,  where  ridicule  takes 
the  form  of  satire  rather  than  that  of  caricature. 

Tli3  striking  features  of  Moliere's  genius,  the 
more  salient  qualities  of  his  art,  are  the  merriment 
that  oozes  at  every  pore,  as  it  were,  from  his  intel- 
lectually joyous  nature,  the  fertility  of  invention  he 
displays,  his  variety  of  situations,  his  facility  of 
production,  his  ease,  grace,  and  harmony  of  versifi- 
cation, and  his  readiness  to  catch  at  every  fresh 
incident  or  suggested  character.  An  instance  of 
this  mercurial  quickness  is  given  in  the  history  of 
that  fine  satirical  comedy,  Les  Fdcheux  ; — 

"  At  the  first  representation  the  scene  of  the  chasseur 
was  wanting.  After  the  performance,  Louis  XIV.,  ad- 
dressing himself  to  Moliere  and  pointing  with  his  finger 
to  Monsieur  de  Soyecourt,  the  Grand  Veneur,  said, 
*  There  is  an  original  you  have  not  yet  copied.'  The  next 
day  the  incomparable  scene  of  Eraste  and  Dorante  was 
added  to  the  piece  ;  and  it  is  amusing  enough  that  Mon- 
sieur de  Soyecourt  himself  should  have  been  the  very  per- 
son to  furnish  Moliere  with  all  the  technical  terms  so 
skilfully  employed  by  him  in  that  dialogue." 

The  pastoral  of  Melicerte  is  a  fragment — Moliere 
being  hurried  by  the  impatience  of  the  King,  and 
never  finishing  it.  Had  it  been  completed,  it 
would  have  taken  high  rank  as  a  piece  in  the  man- 
ner of  Theocritus,  of  Tasso  in  his  Aminta>  and  of 
Guarini  in  his  Pastor  Fido. 

The  farces  are  drawn  mainly  in  motive  and  man- 
ner from  the  Italian  and  Spanish  dramatic  litera- 
ture of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  in 
which  the  amusing  and  clever  valets  play  so  prom- 
inent a  part.  Such  pieces  are  Les  Fourberies  de 
Scapin,  Le  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme,  La  Comtesse  d? 
Escarbagnas,  Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac,  Le  Medecin 
Malgre  lui,  George  Dandin,  Le  Sicilien,  L*  Amour 
Medecin,  Le  Mariage  Force,  Sganarelle,  and  Les 
Precieuses  Ridicules,  The  Harlequin  and  Pantaloon 


112  French  Literature. 

of  tlie  Italian  stage,  representing  impuatJA.  ji 
ness  and  stupid  credulity,  recur  again  and  again  in 
these  pieces,  and  by  their  constant  contrast  give  rise 
to  ludicrous  scenes  and  awaken  laughter  in  the 
audience.  As  in  the  case  of  the  Arlecchino  and  the 
Pantaleone,  the  same  names  are  used  for  the  same 
types  of  character  in  different  plays  and  different 
situations.  Moliere's  names  for  tiiem  are  generally 
Mascarille  and  Sganarelle,  though  occasionally  the 
tricky  valet  bears  a  different  name,  as  in  the  case 
of  Scapin. 

These  characters  were  borrowed,  though  in  the 
hands  of  Moliere  they  grew  into  creations  in  which 
comic  wit  by  the  force  of  a  rich  imagination  allied 
itself  with  the  very  poetry  of  merriment.  But  in 
his  soubrettes  Moliere  was  wholly  original.  The 
clear,  sharp  wit  of  the  French  woman,  so  much  in- 
sisted on  by  Taine,  in  his  contest  between  the 
English  and  the  French  feminine  character,  sug- 
gested to  the  great  comic  artist  this  expansion  of 
the  comic  field.  He  was  the  first  to  put  on  the 
stage  this  type,  and  to  this  day  the  name  of  Les 
Servantes  de  Moliere  is  the  technical  term  for  this 
class  of  stage-characters.  Keen  perception,  rough 
matter-of-fact  common-sense,  hard-headed  direct- 
ness, and  a  simplicity  in  no  way  related  to  stupid- 
ity, are  their  traits.  Such  is  Nicole,  the  faithful 
servant  of  Monsieur  Jourdain. 

Of  the  comedies  proper,  the  Ecole  des  Maris,  the 
$cole  des  Femmes,  the  Etourdi,  the  Avare,  Don 
Garde  de  Navarre,  the  Depit  Amoureux,  and  the 
Malade  Imaginaire  may  be  named  as  the  chief.  In 
these  we  generally  find  his  Mascarille  and  Sgana- 
relle still  figuring,  but  it  is  as  wholly  subordinate 
characters.  The  sensible  servante  is  in  them  all, 
under  various  names.  Another  character  appears, 
he  who  is  styled  by  the  French  the  Raisonneur, 
and  who  represents  the  judgment  of  the  intelligent 
and  cultivated  part  of  the  community.  In  the 
$cole  d°"  Maris,  Ariste  has  this  part  to  represent  j 


113 

in  the  ficole  dot,  Femmes,  Chrysalde ;  in  the  Afalade 
Imayinaire,  Beralde. 

But  it  is  in  the  complex  comedies,  as  I  have 
ventured  to  call  them,  that  Moliere  reaches  his 
highest  excellence.  In  Don  Juan,  Les  Femmes 
Savantes,  Le  Tartuffe,  and  Le  Misanthrope,  we  find 
him  exalting  comedy  into  a  philosophy  of  human 
nature,  a  philosophy  that  laughs  only  because  it 
holds  it  to  be  wiser  to  laugh  than  to  weep,  but 
which  looks  too  profoundly  into  the  human  heart 
not  to  see  the  darker  side  of  its  folly.  The  slighter 
characters  that  people  his  other  pieces  pass  out  of 
sight  or  make  but  a  little  show  in  these  higher 
manifestations  of  his  now  mature  genius.  For  the 
first  time  characters  of  a  really  complex  structure 
take  their  places  on  the  stage,  creations  such  as 
Don  Juan,  the  abhorrer  of  cant,  pushed  by  his  cli- 
max of  infamy  into  the  very  gulf  of  hypocrisy  he 
had  always  scoffed  at; — such  as  Tartuffe,  the  ser- 
pent-like hypocrite,  of  hypocrites; — such  as  Al- 
ceste,  the  Misanthrope,  wnose  resentment  against 
his  fellowmen  springs  from  the  revolt  of  an  enthu- 
siastic, generous,  and  truthful  spirit  against  the 
hollowness  of  society  around  him. 

Moliere's  style,  always  clear  and  direct,  rises  with 
the  strongly  conceived  characters  and  the  energetic 
movement  of  the  plot  in  these  plays.  He  writes 
poetry  both  tender  and  strong  in  almost  every  line. 
It  is,  however,  the  poetry  of  reasoned  sentiment, 
not  the  instinctive  lyrical  burst  of  song  into  which 
Aristophanes  rises  so  naturally. 

Penetrating  into  the  basis  of  his  genius  by  study- 
ing him  in  these  plays  where  he  is  at  his  best,  we 
may  confidently  say  that  a  warm  and  loving  heart, 
enlightened  by  sound  judgment  and  working  in 
the  interests  of  truth  through  the  form  of  comedy, 
is  the  power  that  gives  unity  and  vitality  to  Mo- 
liere's productions.  There  is,  of  course,  much 
more  in  his  genius  than  this, — an  exquisite  sense 
of  the  ludicrous,  wonderful  powers  of  observation, 
3 


114  French  Literature. 

a  fine  perception  of  the  proprieties  of  social  life,  the 
large  miscellaneous  information  which  seems  to  be 
a  special  gift  with  great  poets,  tact  in  the  selection 
of  harmonious  traits  and  effective  contrasts,  the  en- 
thusiasm of  the  satirist,  timed  and  moderated  by 
the  judgment  of  one  who  knew  well  king,  court, 
and  people,  and  many  other  qualities  of  the  master 
in  his  art.  It  took  many  splendid  qualities  to 
make  a  Moliere,  but  at  the  bottom  of  them  all  and 
rising  through  them  all  was  the  good  heart. 


Racine.  115 


IX, 

RACINE. 

CORXEILLE  had  taken  Koman  stories  for  his 
subjects  and  Latin  literature  for  inspiration.  Kacine 
was  a  good  Greek  scholar,  and  went  to  tlte  higher 
literature  for  models.  Corneille,  influenced  partly 
by  the  tone  of  the  Spanish  drama,  which  he  studied 
early  in  his  career  and  to  which  he  owed  the  con- 
ception of  his  Cid,  introduced  into  French  dramatic 
literature  that  grand  and  stately  declamation  which 
is  its  main  characteristic.  Racine  kept  up  this 
tradition,  but  gave  to  his  verse  greater  harmony 
and  grace.  There  is  a  singularly  close  resemblance 
between  the  relation  borne  by  Racine  to  Corueille 
and  that  borne  by  Pope  to  Dryden,  even  though 
Pope  utterly  lacked  the  dramatic  element.  Pope, 
like  Racine,  was  more  polished  and  "correct." 
Dryden,  like  Corneille,  had  more  native  force  and 
vigor.  The  resemblance  is  borne  out  by  the  fur- 
ther facts,  that  Dryden  drew  much  of  his  dramatic 
inspiration  from  the  Spanish  literature;  and  that 
Dryden  translated  Virgil,  while  ^Pope  selected 
Homer  for  his  great  experiment  in  translation. 
They  ought  indeed  to  have  exchanged  their  parts, 
for  the  genius  of  Corneille  and  of  Dryden  had  far 
more  affinity  with  the  glowing  energy  of  the  Hel- 
lenic mind  than  with  the  cold  and  orderly  move- 
ment of  the  Roman. 

So  much  for  the  general  place  which  Racine 
occupies  in  French  literature.  Let  us  now  take  a 
rapid  survey  of  his  life  and  works. 

Jean  Racine  was  born  at  Ferte*  Milon,  on  the 
21st  December,  1639,  of  a  respectable  family. 
Losing  both  his  parents  at  the  age  of  four,  sent  by 


116  French  Literature. 

his  maternal  grandfather  to  the  college  of  Beauvais, 
going  to  Port  Koyal  at  the  age  of  sixteen  and 
remaining  there  three  years,  he  finished  his  train- 
ing for  life  at  tl^e  college  d'Harcourt. 

His  characteristic  tendencies  showed  themselves 
first  during  his  residence  at  Port  Eoyal,  the  famous 
seat  of  mysticism  in  France.  His  grandmother  and 
his  aunt  Agnes  were  recluses  there,  and  the  youth 
was  much  beloved  by  the  austere  heads  of  that 
singular  institution,  for  he  was  a  quick  and  eager 
student  and  of  an  ardent  and  affectionate  disposition. 
But  his  passion  for  poetry  and  romance  greatly 
shocked  those  grave  masters, — religious  zealots  as 
they  were.  It  was  all  very  well  so  long  as  he 
showed  that  able  scholar,  Claude  Lancelot,  his 
understanding  and  appreciation  of  Euripides  and 
Sophocles.  But,  when  he  was  caught  devouring 
Bishop  Heliodorus's  Byzantine  romance,  The 
Loves  of  Ttieagenes  and  Chariclea,  the  worthy  sacristan 
snatched  the  volume  from  his  hands  and  threw  it 
into  the  fire.  A  second  copy  underwent  the  same 
fate ;  but  the  third  young  Jean  brought  himself  to 
the  ascetic  master,  saying :  u  You  may  put  this  in 
the  fire  too,  for  now  I  have  it  all  by  heart." 

This  little  story  is  valuable,  as  indicating  charac- 
ter. It  shows  the  eager  bent  of  his  mind  toward 
art,  the  sweetness  of  his  temper,  and  the  resolute- 
ness of  his  wiU.  It  also  indicates  the  natural  revolt 
of  youth  and  warm  blood  against  the  spirit  of  as- 
ceticism. Good  men  who  unhappily  lack  imagina- 
tion are  still  to  be  found  setting  their  faces  against 
the  healthy  instincts  of  nature,  under  the  delusion 
that  joy  and  sin  are  nearly  related. 

His  first  literary  venture,  being  coupled  with  the 
adroitness  of  the  born  courtier,  was  a  success.  On 
the  marriage  of  the  young  king  with  the  Spanish 
Infanta,  he  wrote  an  ode  called  La  Nymphe  de  la 
Seine,  which  struck  the  fancy  of  Chapelain,  favorite 
poet  of  the  court,  who  recommended  it  to  the  notice 
of  the  minister,  Colbert.  Racine  received  a  purse 


Racine.  117 

of  a  hundred  louis,  and  afterward  a  pension  of  six 
hundred  livres. 

But,  in  spite  of  this  invitation  given  him  by 
fortune  to  adopt  the  career  of  court-poet,  his  uncle, 
who  held  a  high  ecclesiastical  position  at  Uzes  in 
Languedoc,  put  before  him  such  strong  induce- 
ments to  wait  for  Church-preferment,  that  he  yielded 
and  went  to  live  with  his  kinsman.  Systematic 
theology,  however,  proved  to  the  born  poet  as  dry 
a  study,  as  the  ascetic  habits  of  Port  Royal  had 
been  uncomfortable  practice.  He  returned  to  Paris. 
There,  with  Boileau  and  La  Fontaine  already  his 
friends,  he  began  his  dramatic  career. 

His  first  acted  tragedy  was  Les  Frtres  Ennemis, 
played  in  166-i.  It  is  founded  on  that  stern  story 
set  forth  by  the  great  dramatists  of  Athens  in  the 
Seven  Against  T/iebes  and  the  Antigone,  the  fatal 
struggle  between  Eteocles  and  Polynikes.  But, 
able  as 'the  play  was,  the  representation  of  hot  and 
furious  hatred  did^not  suit  well  Racine's  essentially 
tender  spirit.  If  was  the  influence  of  Corneille 
which  dominated  over  this  first  offering  to  the 
stage. 

His  next  piece,  Alexandre,  gave  too  ample  evi- 
dence of  the  natural  leaning  of  Racine's  mind 
toward  the  exhibition  of  tender  passion  rather  than 
vehement  action.  Corneille,  to  whom  he  read  it 
before  representation,  told  him:  "I  judge  by  this 
play  that  your  talent  is  eminently  poetic,  not  dra- 
matic." Even  Boileau,  his  devoted  friend  and 
counsellor,  did  not  scruple  to  criticise  severely  the 
transformation  of  the  splendid  conqueror  into  a 
love-sick  and  languishing  young  Frenchman. 

About  this  time  his  relations  with  the  Church 
obtained  him  the  presentation  to  the  priory  of 
Epinay ;  but,  his  claim  being  disputed,  a  lawsuit 
followed,  which  he  afterward  found  useful  in  fur- 
nishing material  for  his  comedy  of  the  Plaideurs. 

Hardly  was  he  free  from  the  entanglements 
of  the  law,  when  he  became  involved  in  a  quarrel 


118  French  Literature. 

with  the  Port  Royal  community.  Soic  from  a 
letter  of  remonstrance  on  the  life  he  was  leading, 
written  him  by  his  aunt,  he  took  offence  at  a  pas- 
sage in  a  criticism  of  the  Jansenist  of  Port  Royal. 
Pierre  Nicole,  on  Desmaret's  worthless  work  on 
the  Apocalypse,  in  which  criticism  the  composition 
of  novels  and  plays  was  discredited  as  irreligious 
and  prejudicial  to  morality.  Taking  Nicole's  cen- 
sure as  specially  designed  for  him,  so  lately  rebuked 
by  his  Port  Royalist  aunt,  he  made  a  hot  and  able 
reply  to  it.  To  this  Nicole  made  no  retort,  but  the 
cudgels  were  taken  up  by  three  others  of  the  Port 
Royal  community.  Racine  prepared  a  second  letter, 
but  Boileau,  his  staunch  friend,  dissuaded  him  from 
publishing  it,  saying:  "This  letter  will  do  honor 
to  your  ability,  but  not  to  your  heart.  You  bitterly 
attack  here  men  of  great  merit,  to  whom  you 
owe  no  little  of  what  you  are."  Boileau's  warm, 
frank  friendship  was  through  life  verv  useful  to 
Racine,  and  Racine  repaid  it  with  unceasing  trust 
and  fervent  gratitude.  He  said  to  Boileau  on  his 
death-bed :  "  I  look  upon  it  as  a  happiness  to  die 
before  you." 

He  owed  much  more  to  Boileau  than  this  moder- 
ating touch  of  the  satirist  on  his  shoulder  when  he 
was  in  the  act  of  charging  down  upon  the  instruc- 
tors of  his  youth.  For  Boileau  was  his  able  and 
calm  censor  and  critic,  and  to  his  judicious  counsel 
he  owed  that  spirit  of  careful  selection  which  made 
his  language  so  pure  and  at  the  same  time  so  rich. 
It  is  true,  there  are  other  charms  about  Racine 
which  native  genius  alone  could  form,  but  to  the 
constant  watchfulness  of  Boileau  over  his  style  was 
due  some  share  even  in  that  intellectual  lucidity, 
that  exquisite  delicacy  of  feeling  which  the  clean 
style  so  well  expressed. 

The  first  work  which  exhibited  these  high  quali- 
ties and  the  further  gifts  of  orderly  plot,  consistent 
characterization,  and  general  fidelity  to  the  man- 
ners of  the  age  portrayed,  was  the  Andro?naque} 


Racine.  119 

which  appeared  in  1667.  This  was  Racine's  first 
marked  success,  and  it  was  the  advent  upon 
the  stage  of  the  tragedy  founded  upon  love. 
Corneille  had  painted  moral  grandeur.  Racine 
painted  now  the  heart's  alternate  transports  and 
agonies,  exciting  a  pathetic  interest  which  moved 
even  more  deeply  and  universally  than  the  lofty 
themes  of  the  elder  dramatist.  In  the  Hermione 
of  this  play,  that  great  actress,  Mademoiselle 
Champmesle  for  whom  he  afterwards  created  the 
character  of  Phodre,  made  her  first  appearance. 

Racine's  next  play  was  suggested  by  the  amuse- 
ment he  had  afforded  his  friends,  Boileau,  La  Fon- 
taine, Chapelle,  and  Furetiere,  at  an  entertainment, 
by  his  description  of  the  trial  which  had  put  an 
end  to  his  project  of  taking  holy  orders.  His  re- 
cital produced  such  merriment,  that  they  insisted 
upon  his  making  a  comedy  of  the  incidents  he  had 
described. 

Thus  was  produced  the  Plaideurs.  The  plot  of 
the  comedy  runs  thus :  Monsieur  Perrin  Daudin, 
a  judge  in  Lower  Normandy,  is  so  much  in  love 
with  his  profession  that  he  has  condemned  his  cock 
to  be  beheaded  for  not  waking  him  up  one  morn- 
ing early  enough,  accusing  the  poor  bird  of  having 
been  bribed  to  this  act  of  negligence.  His  son, 
Leander,  convinced  that  he  has  a  veritable  craze, 
persuades  the  porter,  Petit  Jean,  to  keep  him  con- 
fined to  the  house  and  to  let  no  law-pleadings 
come  near  him.  He  escapes,  however,  out  of  the 
window,  but  is  secured  again  by  his  son,  his  secre- 
tary, and  Petit  Jean  ;  and  Leander  now  consults  with 
the  secretary  about  delivering  a  letter  in  disguise 
to  Isabelle,  daughter  to  Chicaneau,  a  client  as  crazy 
as  the  judge.  At  this  point  Chicaneau  enters,  and 
is  soon  joined  by  the  Countess  Pimbesche.  Both 
are  anxious  to  consult  the  judge.  The  lady  is  very 
litigious,  has  been  at  law  forthirty  years,  and  yet  com- 
plains that  there  now  remain  to  her  only  four  or  five 
trifling  cases,  one  against  her  husband,  one  against  her 


120  French  Literature. 

father,  one  against  her  children,  buo  has  ample 
provision  made  for  her,  "  but,"  she  asks,  "  what  is  life 
without  Law  ?  "  Chicaneau  also  tells  his  grievances, 
beginning  with  the  rolling  of  an  ass's  colt  in  his 
meadow  fifteen  or  twenty  years  back.  Suit  upon 
suit,  appeal  upon  appeal,  had  followed,  until  on  his 
finally  losing  his  cause,  he  was  condemned  to  pay 
six  thousand  francs.  They  try  to  console  each 
other,  but  end  in  a  quarrel  and  mutual  insults, 
which  give  rise  to  a  new  law-suit. 

Meanwhile  Leander's  emissary,  in  the  disguise  of 
a  sheriff's  officer,  has  contrived  to  deliver  the  note 
to  Isabelle.  Her  father,  coming  in  as  she  is  read- 
ing it,  asks  what  it  is.  She  tears  it  up,  saying  it 
is  a  summons.  The  messenger  behaves  so  as  to 
get  a  beating  from  old  Chicaneau,  and  begs  him  to 
go  on  with  further  injuries,  as  the  action  he  will  be 
able  to  bring  will  save  him  and  his  four  small 
children  from  want  for  the  rest  of  their  lives. 
Chicaneau,  alarmed,  gets  his  daughter  to  write  an 
apology,  which  she  words  so  as  to  make  it  a  full 
consent  to  her  marriage  with  Leander. 

Judge  Daudin,  shut  up  in  the  house,  now  appears 
on  the  roof,  and  from  that  elevated  position  holds 
a  consultation  with  his  clients  in  the  street.  Re- 
moved from  the  house-roof,  he  holds  forth  to  his 
audience  through  the  grating  of  his  cellar.  At  last, 
his  son  puts  before  him  a  case  of  a  thoroughly 
domestic  character.  The  dog,  Citron,  has  abstracted 
a  capon.  Petit  Jean  prosecutes  the  case,  the  secre- 
tary defends,  Leander  plays  audience.  Petit  Jean, 
not  skilled  in  legal  technicalities,  although  a 
prompter  has  on  that  account  been  assigned  him, 
constantly  makes  blunders.  The  secretary's  plead- 
ing wanders  off  to  Aristotle,  Pythagoras,  the 
Corinthians,  and  finally  to  the  creation  of  the  world. 
"Ah  !"  cries  the  poor  judge,  who  has  in  vain  been 
trying  to  bring  him  to  the  point,  "pass  on  to  <he 
Deluge."  But  the  pleader  sticks  fast  to  the  ^gin- 
ning of  things,  and  at  last  the  judge  falls  Asleep. 


Racine.  121 

His  son,  seeing  him  after  a  time  waking  up,  urge* 
h'm  to  pass  sentence,  on  which  he  cries  out:  "To 
the  galleys  with  him!"  "What!  a  dog  to  the 
galleys?"  "Oh!"  cries  the  judge,  "he  has  filled 
my  head  with  the  chaos  he  has  been  describing. 
Finish  the  pleading."  The  defendant's  counsel  now 
presents  a  couple  of  pups  to  the  court,  pleading 
their  pitiful  condition  if  made  orphans.  The 
judge's  indecision  is  broken  in  upon  presently  by 
the  entrance  of  the  fair  Isabelle  and  her  father. 
The  parties  are  all  brought  to  consent  to  the  match 
between  Isabelle  and  Leander,  the  judge  being 
made  well  content  with  a  promise  of  many  causes 
to  be  tried  at  home,  only  he  insists  that  in  future 
the  speeches  of  counsel  must  not  be  so  long. 

Much  of  the  fun  of  this  piece  lay  in  the  mimicry 
of  prominent  advocates  of  the  day  and  of  a  judge 
who  was  given  to  exercising  his  profession  in  his 
own  family.  The  king  was  greatly  amused  by  this 
comedy;  and  Moliere,  who  was  not  at  this  time 
on  good  terms  with  Racine,  gave  it  emphatic  praise. 

Racine's  next  piece,  although  comparatively  a 
failure,  had  an  important  effect  on  the  conduct  of 
his  king.  Louis  had  been  in  the  habit  of  engag- 
ing personally  in  the  court-ballets,  of  which  he  was 
very  fond.  But,  as  Nero,  in  this  new  tragedy  of 
Racine's,  the  Britannicus,  is  censured  for  making 
himself  "a  spectacle  to  the  Romans,"  tlie  king 
renounced  the  practice  forever. 

Berenice  was  Racine's  next  play.  It  is  said  to 
have  been  written  at  the  request  of  Henrietta,  the 
English  princess,  sister  to  Charles  II.  and  wife  to 
Louis  XIV.'s  brother,  her  motive  being  a  desire  to 
see  represented  the  sorrows  of  the  Emperor  Titus  and 
of  Berenice,  the  Jewish  princess  whom  he  loved  and 
would  have  married  but  for  the  emphatic  disap- 
probation of  the  Roman  people.  These  love-sor- 
rows she  is  said  to  have  felt  a  deep  sympathy  for, 
regarding  her  own  case  and  Louis's  as  somewhat 
similar  to  Titus  and  Berenice's. 


122  French  Literature. 

Unfortunately,  tlie  tneme  was  such  that  there 
could  be  no  action  in  the  play,  none  of  that  move- 
ment toward  a  definite  end  which  makes  the  true 
drama.  Chapelle,  Racine's  friend,  being  urged  by 
him  to  give  his  opinion  frankly,  replied  with  the 
couplet : 

"  Marion  pleure,  Marion  crie, 
Marion  veut  qu'on  la  marie." 

Even  the  king  made  fun  of  it.  Meeting  the  court 
physician  on  coining  out  of  the  theatre,  after  the 
play  was  over,  he  said  to  him  gravely :  "  I  have 
just  been  on  the  point  of  sending  for  you  to  attend 
a  princess  who  wanted  to  die,  but  did  not  know 
how  to  set  about  it." 

After  Berenice  came  Bajazet,  acted  in  1672,  and 
Mithridate,  acted  in  1673.  The  latter  was  a  great 
success,  and  has  this  historical  souvenir  connected 
with  it,  that  Charles  XII.  of  Sweden  pored  over  it 
many  hours  in  his  dreary  days  at  Bender,  no  other 
play  being  so  great  a  favorite  with  him. 

The  next  year,  1674,  Racine  produced  his  Iplii- 
genie,  in  which  Mademoiselle  Champmesle,  enacting 
the  heroine,  brought  many  tears  from  the  eyes  of 
the  courtiers.  This  great  actress  having  besought 
Racine  to  create  for  her  a  part  in  which  she  could 
portray  all  the  passions,  he  wrote  and  brought  out 
in  1677  the  greatest  of  all  his  plays,  the  Phddre. 

As  in  Iphiyenie,  he  had  purposely  departed  from 
the  plot  of  his  master,  Euripides,  so  in  PhMre,  he 
depicts  a  character  very  different  from  the  guilty 
Phaedra  of  the  Greek  dramatist.  This  character, 
always  a  grand  one  on  the  French  stage,  whether 
illustrated  by  a  Rachel  or  by  a  Sara  Bernhardt, 
and  indeed  bearing  the  same  relation  to  other  parts 
in  French  dramatic  literature  that  Hamlet  does  to 
others  in  English,  deserves  special  study.  Phaedra, 
in  Euripides,  is  intended  to  be  hateful,  an  object  of 
horror :  the  whole  interest  of  the  audience  is  to  be 


Racine.  123 

concentrated  on  Hippolytus.  She  comes  on  the 
stage  to  die;  she  has  no  vestige  of  hope ;  she 
looks  ghastly  and  frightful ;  possessed  and  cursed  by 
Aphrodite,  she  is  really  a  madwoman ;  she  has, 
however,  in  her  frenzy,  the  cunning  of  madness  ; 
and,  with  the  horrible  hate  that  grows  out  of  ac- 
cursed and  ungratified  love,  she  dies  leaving  a  lie 
behind  her — the  accusation  of  her  step-son  to  his 
father.  The  Greek  Phaedra  on  the  modern  stage 
would  have  made  a  poor  acting  part,  because  call- 
ing forth  no  atom  of  sympathy,  but  only  loathing 
and  disgust. 

Racine  changed  the  situation  and  the  character. 
In  his  hands,  Phedre  becomes  a  woman,  humanized 
from  the  monster  that  Euripides  painted  ;  she  ex- 
cites our  sympathy,  moves  our  deep  compassion, 
softens  horror  into  pity.  Infirmity  of  will  is  the 
keynote  to  her  character;  desperate  pressure  of 
circumstance  breaks  through  the  guards  of  con- 
science and  duty,  and  she  gives  way  to  crime 
through  weakness  to  resist  temptation.  The  Greek 
Phaedra  is  a  depraved  wretch  or  a  stark  madwoman. 
The  French  Phedre  is  a  poor  weak  and  sinful 
woman,  struggling  pitifully  against  the  evil  she  is 
yet  not  strong  enough  to  resist. 

Noble  as  this  play  is,  it  did  not  at  once  take 
possession  of  the  stage.  A  miserable  conspiracy 
formed  by  a  miserable  court  clique  banished 
PhMre  from  the  stage  for  a  year.  Pradon,  a  hack 
writer,  was  induced  by  Madame  Deshoulieres  (an 
enemy  of  both  Boileau  and  Racine),  her  brother, 
the  Due  de  Nevers,  and  others,  to  write  a  play  on 
the  same  subject.  They  then  hired  the  chief  places 
in  the  two  theatres  for  the  first  five  nights,  left 
;hose  in  Racine's  house  vacant,  and  filled  those  in 
the  other,  so  that  Pradon's  play  seemed  to  be  the 
favorite.  This  mean  trick  did  not  prevent  the 
ultimate  success  of  Phedre;  but  Racine  was  dis- 
gusted, and  never  again  wrote  a  play  on  any  but  a 
Biblical  subject. 


124  French  Literature. 

He  began  to  think  of  joining  the  Carthusians ;  but 
his  confessor  persuaded  him  to  marry  instead.  He 
married  a  lady  with  an  utter  distaste  for  plays  and 
poetry,  but  of  excellent  sense  and  good  humor,  pleas- 
ing in  countenance,  and  wholly  indifferent  to  wealth 
or  rank.  Bulwer-Lytton,  who  in  his  own  experi- 
ence had  little  reason  to  regard  a  wife  with  literary 
tastes  as  specially  desirable,  has  this  comment  on 
Eacine's  family  life : — 

"  It  has  been  said  that  the  wife  of  Racine  had  so  little 
participation  in  the  artistic  life  of  her  spouse,  that  she 
had  never  even  read  his  plays.  But,  as  Racine  was  ten- 
derly attached  to  her,  and  of  a  nature  too  sensitive  not 
to  have  needed  some  sort  of  sympathy  in  those  to  whom 
he  attached  himself,  and  as,  by  all  accounts,  his  marriage 
was  a  very  happy  one,  so  it  is  fair  to  presume  that  the 
sympathy  withheld  from  his  artistic  life  was  maintained 
in  the  familiar  domestic  every-day  relationship  of  his  pos- 
itive existence,  and  that  he  did  not  ask  the  heart  of 
Madame  Racine  to  beat  in  unison  with  his  own  over  the 
growing  beauties  of  those  children  whom  she  was  not 
needed  to  bring  into  the  world.  Why  ask  her  to  shed  a 
mother's  tears  over  the  fate  of  Britannicus,  or  to  recoil 
with  a  mother's  horror  from  the  guilt  of  Phedre  ?  they 
were  no  offspring  of  hers." 

After  giving  up  the  theatre,  Racine  sought  a 
reconciliation  with  the  recluses  of  Port  Royal,  and 
was  forgiven  his  bitter  letter.  Appointed  now  with 
Boileau  to  be  historiographer  to  the  king,  he  and 
hisfriend  had  to  follow  that  vainglorious  campaigner 
into  Flanders,  and  on  this  journey  Racine's  inno- 
cence and  simplicity  about  the  common  things  of 
every-day  life  was  the  occasion  of  much  diversion 
to  the  courtiers. 

Rapine's  pen  had  lain  idle  for  twelve  years,  when 
Madame  de  Maintenon  induced  him  to  compose  a 
piece  for  the  young  damsels  of  St.  Cyr,  in  which 
human  love  should  have  no  part.  He  wrote  his 
,  to  fulfil  the  lady's  bidding,  greatly  to  the 


Racine.  125 

delight  of  the  court,  who  beheld  in  King  Assuerus 
Louis  himself,  in  Vashti  Madame  de  Moutespan,  in 
Esther  Madame  de  Maintenon,  and  in  Haman  the 
minister  Louvois. 

Athalle  was  written  for  the  same  young  ladies, 
but  Madame  de  Maintenon  changed  her  mind,  and 
would  not  have  them  act  it.  The  play,  when 
printed,  at  first  made  little  impression.  But  a  gen- 
tleman, in  redeeming  a  forfeit  when  playing  with  a 
gay  party  some  games  at  a  chateau  near  Paris,  was 
condemned  to  read  the  first  act  of  Athah'e  as  a  pen- 
alty, and  having,  greatly  to  his  own  surprise  as  well 
as  that  of  his  friends,  found  it  impossible  to  stop 
until  he  had  read  the  whole  play,  spoke  so  highly 
of  it,  that  they  decided  to  hear  him  read  it  aloud 
the  next  day.  This  resulted  in  a  change  of  public 
opinion  as  to  the  merits  of  the  piece.  Boileau  de- 
clared it  to  be  Racine's  masterpiece,  though  the 
author  preferred  Phedre. 

Some  lines  in  this  poem  on  absolute  power  are 
thought  to  have  giverf  offence  to  the  king.  But  his 
anger  did  not  show  itself  until  on  Madame  de 
Maintenon's  persuading  the  poet  to  draw  up  a  me- 
morial which  should  enlighten  Louis  as  to  the  suf- 
ferings of  his  people,  the  king  ceased  to  notice  him 
or  to  speak  to  him.  Louis  had  accustomed  his  peo- 
ple— and  especially  those  who  were  much  at  court 
— to  live  on  the  hope  of  his  smile  resting  upon 
them;  and  poor  Racine  is  supposed  to  have  sunk 
under  the  mortification  of  his  master's  neglect.  He 
died  on  the  21st  of  April,  1699.  His  wife  had 
borne  him  seven  children,  two  sons  and  five  daugh- 
ters. 

He  was  of  middle  size,  with  pleasant,  frank,  and 
cheerful  countenance  ;  was  a  good  father,  husband, 
and  friend,  and  a  sincerely  pious  man;  so  good  a 
scholar  that  he  is  said  to  have  once  entertained  a 
company  with  the  (E<I!j>»x  Ti/rannus  before  him  in 
Greek,  while  he  gave  it  out  to  them  in  ready  and 
eloquent  French,  llis  only  fault^was  a  tendency  to 


126  French  Literature. 

severe  and  satirical  treatment  of  those  who  attacked 
him. 

His  skill  in  depicting  the  tender  passions,  his 
grace  and  purity  of  style,  his  facility  and  the  ex- 
quisite felicity  of  his  easy-flowing  verse,  his  com- 
parative freedom  from  that  monotonously  declama- 
tory rhetoric  which  disfigures  French  tragedy,  his 
masterly  clearness,  furnish  reasons  enough  for  the 
high  place  which  is  universally  conceded  him  by 
his  countrymen. 


Jnder  Louis  XIV.  127 


X. 

UNDEE  LOUIS  XIV. 

LA  FONTAINE  said,  "  Moli&re  is  my  man ; "  and 
there  was  indeed  the  same  vein  of  rich  humor  in 
them  both,  though  developed  in  different  directions. 
They  were  staunch  friends  through  life,  and  they 
lie  at  this  day  near  each  other  in  Pere  la  Chaise. 

Geruzez  says  of  La  Fontaine's  genius,  "  it  is  the 
flower  of  Gallic  wit  with  a  perfume  of  antiquity. 
He  recalls  Phcedrus  and  Horace,  but  he  is  also  a 
result  of  Villon  and  Rabelais.  In  him  we  find 
blended  all  that  is  most  exquisite  in  classic  anti- 
quity and  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  that  without  a 
trace  of  effort,  so  that  he  reproduces  the  charm  of 
a  double  tradition  with  the  air  of  perfect  orig- 
inality." 

Jean  de  La  Fontaine  was  born  at  Chateau-Thierry, 
in  Champagne,  in  1621.  He  was  idle  in  his  youth, 
but  became  a  great  reader  when  he  had  once  dis- 
covered his  taste  for  poetry. 

Though  selfish  and  immoral,  there  was  a  child- 
like good-nature  about  his  manner  which  seems  to 
have  had  a  singular  charm  for  many  of  his  most 
distinguished  contemporaries  ;  and  Moliere,  Boileau, 
Racine,  and  Fenelon  were  all  fond  of  him.  He  died 
at  Paris  in  1695. 

His  earlier  works  were  Tales  and  Novels  in 
Verse  (Contes  et  Nouvelles  en  Vers).  But  he  is 
chiefly  known  by  his  Select  Fables  in  Verse 
(Fables  Choisies  inises  en  Vers).  The  style  of 
La  Fontaine  is  inimitable  in  its  arch  sim- 
plicity, its  merry,  childlike  malice,  its  air  of 
cool,  sardonic  effrontery.  His  very  immoralities 
seem  like  the  irresponsible  pranks  of  a  Puck. 


128  French  Literature. 

His  narrative  is  limpid  in  ease  and  grace,  and  he 
enters  into  the  story  with  such  zest  as  to  give  it  a 
marvelously  lifelike  naturalness.  His  fables  are 
such  witty  satires  on  humanity,  that  they  have 
always  been  a  delight  to  all  ages  and  classes  ot 
readers.  Imagine  Chaucer,  in  one  of  his  merry  moods, 
passed  by  some  process  of  transmigration  into  the 
pungent  spirit  of  Heine,  and  the  result  of  the  trans- 
fusion would  be  just  such  a  delicious  sub-acid  frmt 
as  La  Fontaine  makes  among  the  dainties  of  litera- 
ture. 

In  treating  of  the  literary  splendor  of  the  age  of 
Louis  XIV.,  I  have  taken  the  great  masters  of 
tragedy  and  of  comedy  separately,  and  first  after 
them,  as  was  just,  I  have  named  the  great  fabulist, 
whom  many  French  critics  consider  so  unique  as  to 
have  no  true  analogue  in  any  other  literature.  To 
these  must  now  be  added  a  cluster  of  writers  whose 
relations  to  one  another  were  peculiar. 

There  is  the  Due  de  La  Rochefoucauld,  whose 
name  calls  upon  that  of  Madame  de  Sevigne  and 
that  of  Madame  de  La  Fayette.  There  is  also  that 
Paul  de  Gondi,  who  became  the  famous  Cardinal  de 
Retz  and  was  the  friend  of  Madame  de  Se'vigne', 
Corneille,  Moliere,  and  Boileau,  as  well  as  the 
author  of  most  valuable  and  entertaining  Memoires. 
Both  La  Rochefoucauld  and  the  Cardinal  were 
formed,  as  thinkers  and  political  writers,  by  their 
share  in  the  troubles  of  the  Fronde. 

Fran9ois,  Due  de  La  Rochefoucauld  and  Prince 
de  Marsillac,  was  born  in  1613.  When  the  tumult- 
uous scenes  of  the  Fronde  were  over,  he  gave 
himself  up  to  literary  pursuits,  and  composed  his 
Memoires  and  also  his  better  known  work,  called 
Reflections  or  Moral  Sentences  and  Maxims  (Reflex- 
ions ou  Sentences  et  Maximes  Morales),  a  work  in 
which  the  bitter  experiences  he  bad  had  of  human 
selfishness  and  duplicity  in  a  period  of  great  dis- 
order and  corruption  only  too  strongly  pointed  his 
epigrammatic  observations.  It  is  to  him  that  we 


Under  Lows  XIV.  129 

owe  that  striking  definition  of  hypocrisy,  as  "  the 
homage  that  vice  renders  to  virtue."  It  is  to  him, 
too,  unfortunately,  that  we  owe  many  a  pithy 
maxim  of  Macchiavellian  heartlessness,  emphasiz- 
ing the  folly  of  putting  faith  in  man.  He  was  a 
keen  observer,  but  he  had  a  wretched  world 
to  observe  in  the  days  of  the  Fronde.  It  was 
but  natural  then,  that  he  should  take  the  narrow 
view  of  life  and  trace  all  the  springs  of  human 
action  to  the  low  motive  of  self-love.  Setting  out 
from  this  philosophic  basis,  most  of  his  maxims, 
though  often  brilliant,  witty,  and  amusingly  tart,  are 
thoroughly  cynical. 

With  all  these  Macchiavellian  spurts  of  venom 
against  human  nature,  La  Rochefoucauld,  according 
to  the  testimony  of  the  best  among  his  contempo- 
raries, was  in  his  own  character  singularly  chival- 
rous, high-minded,  and  honorable.  One  of  his  biog- 
raphers said  of  him,  "  He  gave  the  example  of  all 
the  virtues  of  which  he  would  seem  to  deny  the 
existence."  He  ridicules  bravery  as  a  madness. 
Yet  in  more  than  one  hard-fought  battle  he  showed 
all  the  splendid  courage  of  his  race.  He  says  that 
men  "in  the  adversity  of  their  best  friends  always 
find  something  that  does  not  displease  them,"  and, 
again,  "  we  have  always  sufficient  strength  to  bear 
the  ills  of — another."  Yet  this  man,  who  sneered 
at  friendship,  was  a  devoted  friend  to  those  he 
loved;  and  of  this  proclaimer  of  man's  innate 
selfishness,  Madame  de  Sevigne'  tells  us,  that  in  his 
last  painful  illness,  he  thought  more  of  others  than 
of  himself.  Cardinal  de  Retz,  in  his  Memoires,  tes- 
tifies that,  in  all  the  relations  of  private  life,  he 
was  the  honestest  man  of  his  age. 

This  contrast  between  La  Rochefoucauld's  charac- 
ter and  his  writings  is  worth  noting,  as  a  warning 
to  every  man  to  look  into  his  own  heart  as  Mon- 
taigne did.  as  well  as  into  that  of  his  neighbor,  for 
in  this  instance  the  hearts  into  which  the  brilliant 
duke  looked  wer«  far  meaner  than  his  own,  and 
9 


130  French  Literature, 

the  reflections  they  caused  him  to  make  worked 
incalculable  injury  to  his  country.  Voltaire  tells 
'is,  that  the  book  which  most  contributed  to  form 
the  taste  of  the  French  nation  was  these  very  Max- 
ims of  La  Eochefoucauld ;  and  thousands  of  ob- 
serving historical-critics  concur  in  assuring  us  that 
this  taste  for  brilliant  mockery  of  man's  nature, 
this  spirit  of  disbelief  in  virtue,  had  more  to  do 
with  bringing  on  the  great  Eevolution  than  any 
other  one  thing.  In  that  time  of  horror  La  Roche- 
foucauld's  descendant  perished. 

One  of  La  Rochefoucauld's  dearest  friends  was 
Madame  de  La  Fayette  (1623-1693),  a  woman  of 
charming  wit  and  irreproachable  character.  Be- 
fore knowing  La  Rochefoucauld,  she  had  already 
written  Za'ide,  a  romance  of  pure  imagination.  In 
her  later  work,  La  Princesse  de  C&ves,  she  mingled 
with  the  fiction  a  large  share  of  the  life  around  her. 
The  scene  is  laid  in  the  time  of  Henri  II.,  but  it  is 
really  the  court  of  Louis  XIV.  that  appears  under 
thin  disguises.  Madame  de  Montespan  is  painted 
in  the  character  of  the  Duchesse  de  Yalentinois. 
The  Duchesse  D'0rle*ans  appears  masquerading  as 
the  young  Queen  of  Scotland,  Fran9ois  II.'s  wife. 
La  Fayette  is  masked  as  the  Prince  de  Cleves,  and 
La  Rochefoucauld  as  the  Due  de  Nemours.  Guizot 
says:  "This  delicate,  elegant,  and  virtuous  tale, 
with  its  pure  and  refined  style,  enchanted  the  court, 
which  recognized  itself  at  its  best  and  painted 
under  its  brightest  aspect."  The  Princesse  de 
Cloves  had  a  great  success.  It  was  a  new  order  of 
romance.  While  the  court  and  characters  of 
Louis  XIV.  have  been  transferred  to  the  days  of 
Henri  II.  and  Francois  II.,  the  historical  events  of 
the  earlier  time  have  been  kept  unchanged,  and 
there  is  a  tone  of  truth  and  nature  about  the  work 
which  gives  it  a  high  place  as  an  artistic  creation. 

Another  friend  of  the  brilliant  duke's  was  that 
Madame  de  Sevigne',  whose  letters  are  the  most 
famous  in  the  world.  She  was  herself  famous  in 


Under  Louis  XIV.  .      131 

her  day,  without  reference  to  those  letters  on  which 
her  fame  now  rests.  Sbe  was  full  of  charm  ;  lively, 
tender,  sympathetic,  witty,  good,  perfectly  natural 
and  unaffected,  she  kept  many  friends  and  made 
no  enemies.  One  of  her  critics  says  of  her,  that  so 
happy,  pure,  and  sensible  was  her  nature,  Menage 
and  Chapelain  could  instruct  her  without  making 
her  pedantic,  the  Hotel  Rambouillet  could  enrich 
her  code  of  propriety  with  maxims  of  social  manners 
without  spoiling  her  clearness  of  perception,  the 
friendship  of  Port  Royal  could  be  assured  her  with- 
out her  sharing  in  the  austerity  of  that  school,  and 
she  could  even  undergo  the  slanders  of  Bussy- 
Rabutin  without  losing  her  fair  fame  or  her  good 
temper.  Madame  de  La  Fayette  said  that  her  wit 
really  dazzled  the  eyes.  One  can  well  believe  even 
this  apparent  extravagance,  so  charmingly  does  her 
love  of  fun  bubble  up  and  sparkle  as  it  runs  over 
every  here  and  there  in  her  letters,  and  her  eyes 
seem  to  dance  with  delight  as  she  sketches  with 
felicitous  touches  some  absurd  scene  that  she  has 
witnessed  and  laughed  at  merrily.  She  must  have 
been  a  refreshing  companion,  so  unquenchable  was 
her  gayety,  and  so  buoyant  her  spirits.  In  her 
letters  there  is  endless  variety,  sparkling  wit,  ani- 
mated narrative,  arch  humor,  keen  observation, 
warmth  of  feeling,  force  and  weight  of  reflection. 
She  is  never  tedious ;  whatever  her  subject,  she  is 
always  entertaining. 

She  was  independent,  too,  and  never  ceased  to 
let  fall  thoughts  that  were  little  in  accordance  with 
the  air  of  that  abject  court  in  which  despotism  had 
become  firmly  seated  in  the  person  of  Louis  XIV. 
Her  faithfulness  to  old  ties  was  shown  in  her  never- 
concealed  attachment  to  the  Arnaulds,  her  prefer- 
ence for  Corneille  when  Racine  had  become  the 
popular  idol,  her  constant  kindness  to  Cardinal  de 
Retz.  It  is  from  a  letter  of  hers  to  her  daughter 
in  1672,  that  we  learn  how  the  literary  men  of  the 
day  gathered  around  the  old  hero  of  the  Fronde 


132  French  Literature. 

in  spite  of  his  political  disgrace.  '  Jorneille," 
says  she,  "  has  read  him  a  piece  which  will  be 
played  shortly,  and  which  recalls  the  ancients. 
Moliere  will  read  him  Saturday  his  Trissotrin, 
which  is  a  very  merry  thing.  Despreaux  [Boileau] 
will  give  him  his  Lutrin  and  his  Art  of  Poetry. 
There  is  all  one  can  do  to  please  him." 

Before  we  tarn  to  De  Retz,  it  will  be  well  for 
me  to  gather  in  a  brief  paragraph  the  principle 
facts  of  this  gifted  woman's  life.  Marie  de  Rabutin- 
Chantal  (1626-1696)  was  born  at  Paris.  She  was 
the  only  daughter  of  Celse-Benigne  de  Rabntin, 
Baron  du  Chantal,  and  his  wife,  Marie  de  Coulanges. 
Left  early  an  orphan,  she  was  brought  up  by  the 
abbe  de  Coulanges,  her  mother's  brother.  Menage 
taught  her  Latin,  Italian,  and  Spanish;  Chapelain 
also  assisted  in  training  her  mind.  At  eighteen  she 
was  married  to  the  Marquis  Henri  de  Sevigne,  of 
an  ancient  family  of  Brittany.  He  was  not  a  good 
husband  in  any  way,  but  she  was  not  long  troubled 
with  him,  as  in  about  seven  years  after  their  union 
he  was  killed  in  a  duel.  She  now  devoted  herself 
to  the  education  of  her  son  and  daughter.  When 
she  at  last  returned  to  Paris,  the  most  distinguished 
men  of  the  day  paid  their  court  to  her ;  but  she 
steadily  declined  all  offers  of  marriage.  Her  affec- 
tion for  her  daughter  seems  to  have  been  her 
strongest  passion.  This  daughter  having  married 
the  Comte  de  Grignan,  Governor  of  Provence,  was 
obliged  to  part  from  her  mother.  It  is  to  this 
separation  that  we  owe  that  unrivaled  series  of 
letters,  which  gives  us  so  faithful  a  picture  of  court, 
capital,  and  provincial  life  in  that  remarkable  age. 
The  loving  mother  died  of  small-pox,  while  on  a 
visit  to  her  daughter  at  the  Chateau  de  Grignan. 

At  the  time  Madame  de  Sevigne  wrote  that  letter 
in  which  she  related  how  Corneille,  Moliere,  and 
Boileau  were  joining  in  the  effort  to  entertain  the 
fallen  statesman,  Cardinal  de  Retz  had  given  him- 
self up  to  literary  recreations.  He  had  begun  those 


Under  Louis  XIV.  .133 

Memoires,  which  recount  the  events  and  depict  the 
characters  of  the  Fronde. 

Paul  de  Gondi  (1614-1679)  was  not  meant  by 
nature  for  an  ecclesiastic.  The  traditions  and  rules 
of  a  great  family  forced  him  into  orders,  that  he 
might  be  bishop  of  Paris  in  the  place  of  a  brother 
who  had  died.  It  was  to  no  purpose  that  he  fought 
duels,  carried  off  an  heiress,  conspired  against 
Kichelieu  ;  he  had  to  abide  by  his  vocation.  But 
he  devoted  himself  to  politics,  aspired  to  be  the 
chief  of  a  party,  conducted  the  intrigues  of  the 
Fronde,  and  had  finally  to  succumb  to  the  growing 
strength  of  the  monarchy.  His  Memoires  are  full 
of  admirable  reflections  based  on  his  experience  in 
politics.  They  abound  also  in  finely  drawn  por- 
traits of  the  characters  of  his  time. 

Having  now  given  some  account  of  the  chief 
literary  lights  of  the  age  of  Louis  XIV.,  I  have 
reached  the  point  where  it  is  fitting  to  bring  forward 
the  great  critic  of  that  period,  whose  satires  were 
to  lay  down  the  principles  of  good  taste  and  to  cast 
ridicule  upon  the  writers  who  violated  them.  This 
was  Boileau,  who,  while  his  genius  bears  some 
resemblance  to  that  of  Horace,  has  on  the  whole 
more  points  of  affinity  with  Pope. 

Nicolas  Boileau-Despre'aux  (1636-1711)  was 
born  at  Paris.  He  tried  law  and  theology  in  suc- 
cession, but  finally  gave  himself  up  wholly  to  litera- 
ture. His  works  were  the  Satires,  the  Epttres,  the 
Art  poetique,  and  Lutrin.  In  the  first,  he  declared 
war  on  all  bad  writers,  and  especially  covered  with 
ridicule  the  taste  for  Spanish  emphasis,  Italian 
concetti  and  plays  on  words,  the  sentimental  jargon 
of  the  precieuses,  and  the  buffoonery  and  license 
which  were  defacing  literature  at  the  beginning  of 
his  career,  when  Chapelain  was  still  the  leading 
court  poet  and  Scarron  the  favorite  writer  of 
comedy. 

Boileau,  as  a  poet,  lacks  freshness,  grace,  and 
joyousness.  But  he  makes  up  for  these  deficiencies 


134:  French  Literature. 

by  good  sense,  pure  taste,  and  the  propriety,  force, 
and  correctness  of  Ins  style.  The  Epistles  are 
superior  to  the  Satires.  Their  versification  is 
stronger,  sweeter,  and  more  flexible.  The  Art  of 
Poetry  is  based  on  Horace's  work  of  the  same 
name.  It  summed  up  the  laws  of  poetry,  and  in- 
deed of  good  writing  in  general,  for  that  generation, 
and  formed  the  literary  creed  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  It  is  expressed  in  easy  and  elegant  verses. 

Boileau,  less  gifted  than  Corneille,  Moliere 
Kacine,  and  La  Fontaine,  possessing  neither  cre- 
ative imagination  nor  lyrical  enthusiasm,  and  lack- 
ing also  deep  sensibility,  was  useful  to  his  more 
gifted  friends  in  curbing  their  exuberance  and  di- 
recting their  taste.  His  Lutrin,  a  comic  epic  in  six 
cantos,  may  be  compared  with  Pope's  similar  effort, 
The  Rape  of  the  Lock,  by  many  considered  the 
most  charming  of  his  poems. 

Boileau's  letters  are  also  of  great  value,  twenty 
of  them  having  been  addressed  to  Racine,  and  all 
of  them  giving  much  information  about  the  liter- 
ary history  of  the  time.  Their  chief  value,  how- 
ever, consists  in  the  confirmation  they  furnish  of 
the  high  character  which  his  contemporaries  give 
of  Boileau.  We  see  by  these  letters,  how  pure, 
generous,  and  high-minded,  how  impulsive  and 
warm-hearted  this  keen  satirist  was.  When,  on 
the  death  of  the  minister  Colbert,  orders  were 
given  to  stop  Corneille's  pension,  Boileau  flew  to 
the  king,  made  an  earnest  remonstrance  against 
the  ungenerous  course  of  the  government,  and 
threatened  to  resign  his  own  pension,  if  Corneille's 
were  not  restored.  He  was  just  as  bold  in  his  de- 
nunciation of  the  persecution  directed  against  the 
nuns  of  Port  Royal  and  the  noble  Arnauld.  He 
helped  his  friends  out  of  pecuniary  embarrassments, 
reconciled  some  who  had  quarreled,  gave  good  ad- 
vice to  Racine,  nnd  was  on  friendly  terms  with 
the  most  opposite  parties. 

Among  those  whom  Boileau  satirized  more  se- 


Under  Louis  XIV.  135 

verelv  than,  in  the  judgment  of  some  later  critics, 
their  faults  deserved  were  Br^beuf  and  Quinault. 

Brebeuf  had  some  ability.  His  Pharsale  is  still 
considered  the  most  faithful  translation  of  Lucan's 
historical  epic.  His  religious  poetry,  too,  is  praised 
by  Geruzez.  As  for  Quinault,  his  rivalry  with 
Racine  had  something  to  do  with  the  rigor  of 
Boileau's  criticism.  His  Aslarte  was  a  tragedy  of 
great  merit.  His  comedies,  Les  Rivales  and  La 
Mere  Coquette,  still  hold  their  place  in  collections 
illustrative  of  French  Comedy.  His  great  operas, 
Armide,  Atys,  and  others,  set  to  music  by  Lully, 
were  the  productions  of  a  master  in  that  style  of 
dramatic  production.  His  rank,  according  to  mod- 
ern critics,  is  just  below  that  of  the  most  eminent 
dramatists.  His  skill  lies  in  softening  hearts,  en- 
chanting the  imagination,  delighting  the  ear  with 
the  melody  of  his  verse.  Voltaire  even  goes  so 
far  as  to  claim  for  him  a  place  by  the  side  of  the 
great  masters.  Brebeuf  lived  from  1618  to  1661; 
Quinault,  from  1637"  to  1688. 

A  successor  to  the  Countess  de  La  Fayette  as 
romancer  and  to  Moliere  as  dramatist  was  Jean 
Fran9ois  Regnard  (1655-1709),  who  traveled  exten- 
sively in  early  life.  In  Italy  he  met  the  Eloise 
whom  he  celebrates  in  his  novel  La  Provenqale. 
Taken  by  Algerine  pirates,  he  passed  two  years  in 
Constantinople  as  a  captive.  As  a  dramatist  his 
rank  is  very  high.  His  best  plays  are  Le  Joueur, 
Les  Folies,  and  Le  Legataire  universel.  He  also 
wrote  an  account  of  his  travels. 

Another  group  that  helped  greatly  to  give  lustre 
to  the  age  of  Louis  XIV.  was  that  of  the  great 
preachers.  The  Church  at  no  period  of  French 
history  showed  such  splendor  of  eloquence  as  in 
this  reign.  Churchmen  of  great  intellectual  power 
had  before  this  time  found  in  politics  a  tempting 
sphere  for  activity.  But  the  instinct  of  monarch- 
ical prudence  now  kept  them  out  of  this  field,  in 
which  Richelieu,  Mazarin,  and  De  Retz  had  so  long 


136  French  Literature. 

displayed  their  abilities.  The  result  was  the  trans- 
fer of  all  the  ability  in  the  Church  to  the  more 
legitimate  domain  of  pulpit  eloquence.  It  was 
largely  to  this  change  in  the  social  conditions  that 
France  owed  the  magnificent  prose  of  Bossuet, 
Bourdaloue,  Fenelon,  and  Massilon.  In  the  order 
of  time,  as  well  as  in  that  of  genius,  Bossuet  holds 
the  first  place. 

Jacques  Benigne  Bossuet  (1627-170-i)  was  born 
at  Dijon.  Profoundly  versed  in  theology,  trained 
in  the  philosophy  of  Des  Cartes,  disputant  against 
the  Protestants,  main  agent  in  securing  the  freedom 
of  the  Gallican  Church  from  the  aggressions  of  the 
Papal  See,  opponent  of  Fenelon  in  the  controversy 
about  the  Quietists,  author  of  a  great  number  of 
polemical  writings,  and  of  a  universal  history  down 
to  the  time  of  Charlemagne,  his  life  was  one  of 
ceaseless  activity.  His  master-pieces,  however, 
were  his  funeral  sermons  on  the  decease  of  great 
personages,  and  these  have  always  been  held  to  be 
magnificent  specimens  of  pulpit  eloquence. 

Bourdaloue  was  of  the  school  of  Bossuet,  and  the 
abbe  Maury  said  of  him  that  he  was  one  of  the  fin- 
est of  Bossuet's  works.  Louis  Bourdaloue  (1632- 
1704)  was  born  at  Bourges.  Like  Bossuet,  he  was 
in  character  sound  and  true  to  the  core,  and  his  elo- 
quence was  such  as  to  make  men  forget  how  great 
had  been  that  of  his  brilliant  predecessor.  Madame 
de  Sevigne'  said  that  she  went  to  hear  him  more 
eagerly  than  she  attended  the  grand  festivals  of  the 
court,  though  she  leaned  to  the  school  of  Port 
Eoyal,  and  Bourdaloue  was  of  the  Society  of  Jesus. 
Yet  he  had  recourse  to  none  of  the  means  of  attrac- 
tion furnished  by  impassioned  declamation  or 
ornate  language.  His  style  was  simple  and  direct. 
Clear  reasoning  and  perfect  order  in  the  arrange- 
ment of  his  thoughts  formed  his  principal  charm. 

Voltaire  styles  Bossuet  and  Fenelon  the  Eagle 
and  the  Swan.  In  treating  of  Bossuet,  I  have  al- 
ready mentioned,  in  passing,  the  contest  between 


Under  Louis  XIV.  137 

the  Eagle  and  the  Swan.  Let  us  see  what  a  close 
observer,  whose  memoirs  were  not  published  unti7 
many  years  after  liis  death,  has  to  tell  us  of  thi; 
Swan,  and  try  to  seize  the  secret  of  his  charm  : — 

"  That  prelate,"  says  the  Due  de  St.  Simon,  "  was  a 
tall  thin  man,  well-made,  pale,  with  a  large  nose,  eyes 
whose  fire  and  intelligence  shot  out  like  a  torrent,  and  a 
countenance  the  like  of  which  I  have  never  seen  any- 
where and  which  no  one  who  had  once  seen  it  could  ever 
forget.  In  it  were  gathered  all  things,  and  the  contraries 
it  expressed  were  not  at  war  with  one  another.  There 
was  in  it  gravity  and  gallantry,  seriousness  and  gaiety ;  it 
had  a  trace  equally  of  the  doctor,  the  bishop,  and  the 
great  lord  ;  what  was  diffused  over  it  and  over  his  whole 
person,  was  refinement,  wit,  the  graces,  delicacy,  and, 
above  all,  nobility.  It  required  an  effort  to  cease  gazing 
upon  him.  One  could  not  leave  him,  nor  resist  him,  nor 
fail  to  seek  him  again.  It  is  this  gift,  so  rare  and  which 
he  had  in  so  high  a  degree,  which  kept  all  his  friends  so 
attached  to  him  throughout  his  life,  in  spite  of  his  fall, 
and  which,  when  they  were  scattered,  drew  them  together 
again  to  talk  of  him,  to  regret  him,  long  for  him,  hold 
themselves  more  and  more  attached  to  him,  with  the  love 
of  the  Jews  for  Jerusalem,  and  to  sigh  for  his  return  and 
hope  always,  as  that  unhappy  people  still  expect  and  sigh 
for  the  Messiah." 

Such  a  picture  reveals  to  us  a  man  of  singular 
lovableness,  and  is  the  best  answer  to  the  cvnical 
philosophy  of  the  good  Due  de  La  Rocnefou- 
cauld. 

The  longing  of  Fenelon's  friends  for  his  return, 
of  which  St.  Simon  speaks,  was  never  to  be  grati- 
fied. He  died  in  exile  from  the  court,  being  re- 
stricted to  the  limits  of  his  diocese  of  Cambrai. 

Francois  de  Salignac  de  la  Mothe  Fenelon  (1651- 
1715)  was  born  in  the  chateau  Fenelon,  province  of 
Pe'rigord.  To  beginners  in  the  study  of  French  he 
is  generally  well  known  as  the  author  of  Telemaque, 
that  classical  romance,  which  he  wrote  for  the  in- 
struction of  Louis's  grandson,  the  young  Duke  of 


138  French  Literature. 

Burgundy,  in  the  duties  of  a  prince  to  his  people. 
He  was  fond  of  this  work  of  education,  and  his  first 
publication  was  a  treatise  on  the  Education  of 
Girls. 

As  to  the  Telemaque,  Macaulay  has  well  observed 
that,  low  as  its  place  may  be  in  the  list  of  prose 
epics  or  of  works  on  politics  and  morals,  it  is,  when 
we  consider  the  spirit  of  the  age  in  which  it  was 
written,  one  of  the  most  original  works  that  have 
ever  appeared. 

"  No  person,"  Macaulay  goes  on  to  say,  "  will  do  justice 
to  Fe'nelon,  who  does  not  constantly  bear  in  inind  that 
Telemachus  was  written  in  an  age  and  nation  in  which  bold 
and  independent  thinkers  stared  to  hear  that  twenty  mil- 
lions of  human  beings  did  not  exist  for  the  gratification 
of  one.  That  work  is  commonly  considered  as  a  school 
book,  very  fit  for  children,  because  its  style  is  easy  and 
it»  morality  blameless  ;  but  unworthy  of  the  attention  of 
statesmen  and  philosophers.  We  can  distinguish  in  it,  if 
•we  are  not  greatly  mistaken,  the  first  faint  dawn  of  a  long 
and  splendid  day  of  intellectual  light,  the  dim  promise  of 
a  great  deliverance,  the  undeveloped  germ  of  the  charter 
and  of  the  code." 

Louis  himself,  at  least,  seems  to  have  felt  in- 
stinctively the  danger  of  such  sentiments  to  absolute 
monarchy,  for  Fenelon's  final  fall  from  court-favor 
was  due  to  the  publication  of  Telemaque  from  a 
copy  stolen  by  a  servant.  Fenelon  had  outlived 
the  results  of  his  contest  with  Bossuet  about  the 
doctrines  of  Madame  Guyon  and  her  followers,  the 
Quietists.  He  had  submitted  to  the  decision  of 
Rome  against  him,  and  the  storm  had  blown  over. 
But  the  appearance  of  Telemaque  roused  the  jealous 
king's  hottest  anger.  He  looked  on  the  book  as  a 
satire  on  his  court.  Sesostris  was  Louis  himself; 
Calypso,  Madame  de  Montespan ;  Protesilaus,  the 
minister  Louvois ;  Eucharis,  Mademoiselle  de 
Fontanges. 

Younger  than  Fenelon,  and  resembling  nim  some- 


Under  Louis  XIV. 

what  in  independence  of  thought,  Massillon  come* 
on  the  stage  of  public  fame  as  the  immediate  suc- 
cessor of  Bourdaloue  in  renown  for  pulpit-oratorj. 
Bourdaloue,  when  he  heard  of  his  first  brilliant 
efforts,  quoted  from  Scripture  the  passage:  "He 
must  increase,  but  I  must  decrease." 

Jean  Baptiste  Massillon  (1663-1742)  was  born  at 
Hieres.  Like  Bourdaloue,  he  aimed  to  influence 
his  hearers  by  naturalness  of  style  and  impressive- 
ness  of  manner.  Louis  XIV.  gave  a  striking  criti- 
cism of  his  peculiar  power  as  a  preacher,  when  he 
said  that  in  hearing  other  preachers  lie  felt  satisfied 
with  them,  but  in  hearing  Massillon  he  felt  dissatis- 
fied with  himself.  Physically  as  well  as  mentally 
he  was  well  qualified  for  his  vocation,  having  an 
imposing  majesty  in  his  manner,  a  penetrating  voice, 
and  great  animation  in  his  delivery  when  he  reached 
the  more  impassioned  passages  of  his  sermons. 

The  name  of  Massillon  closes  the  list  of  the  great 
preachers  of  this  age.  Fenelou  did  not  preach  as 
often  as  Bossuet,  Bourdaloue,  and  Massillon ;  but 
his  few  sermons  were  of  great  merit.  There  were 
others,  Mascaron,  Flechier,  La  Rue,  and  Cheminais, 
who,  beside  any  less  shining  examples  of  pulpit- 
oratory,  would  have  borne  the  name  and  fame 
of  great  orators.  There  were,  also,  among  the 
Protestants,  Claude,  Beausobre,  and  Saurin,  whose 
learning  and  eloquence  were  recognized  even  by 
their  opponents. 

Esprit  Flechier  (1632-1710),  besideshis  deservedly 
high  reputation  as  a  preacher,  merits  especial  honor 
for  his  gentleness  to  the  Protestants,  when,  after  the 
revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  he  used  hii 
authority  as  Bishop  of  Nismes  in  the  spirit  of  tolera- 
tion, conciliation,  and  charity. 

In  philosophy,  this  period  produced  Malebranche 
as  the  successor  of  Des  Cartes,  and  La  Bruyere  as 
its  moralist. 

Nicolas  Malebranche  (1631-1715)  was  born  at 
Paris.  His  great  work  was  his  De  la  Recherche  de 


140  French  Literature. 

la  Verite,  or  The  Search  after  Truth,  in  which  h« 
built  up  a  system  of  mystic  idealism.  In  his  view, 
God  is  the  place  of  spirits,  as  space  is  the  place  of 
bodies;  the  human  soul  lives  in  Him,  and  from 
Him  draws  its  life  and  light,  and  according  to  its 
purity  of  origin  from  this  source  does  it  see  the 
essence  of  truth.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  the 
metaphysics  of  Malebranche,  the  critics  are  agreed 
in  commending  his  style  as  precise,  luminous,  and 
flexible. 

Jean  de  La  Bruyere's  fame  rests  upon  a  single 
work,  "The  Characters  of  Theophrastus,  translated 
from  the  Greek,  with  the  Characters  or  the  Morals 
of  this  Age"  (Les  Caracteres  de  Theophraste,  traduits 
du  Grec,  avec  les  Caracteres  ou  les  Mceurs  de  ce 
Siecle),  in  which  he  gives  delicate  and  subtle  deline- 
ations of  the  characters  of  the  men  and  women  of 
his  day.  He  was  born  at  Dourdan,  in  Normandy, 
in  1639,  and  died  in  1696. 

The  scholars  of  the  period  were  Baluze,  Monfau- 
con,  Mabillon,  Tillemont,  and  Ducange.  The  his- 
torians were  Pellisson,  author  of  the  Histoire  de 
Louis  XIV.,  Mezerai,  author  of  the  Histoire  de 
France;  Perefixe,  author  of  the  Histoire  de  Henri 
IV;  Maimbourg,  who  wrote  accounts  of  the  Cru- 
sades and  of  the  League;  Varillas;  Saint-Re'al; 
Daniel;  Dorldans;  Rapin  Thoyras;  Vertot;  the 
Comte  de  Boulainvilliers ;  and  the  Abbe"  Fleury. 

It  was  in  this  age  also,  that  Pierre  Bayle  (1647- 
1706)  put  forth  his  remarkable  Dictionnaire  His- 
torique  et  Critique.  It  had  been  preceded  by  Louis 
Moreri's  similar  work,  and  also  by  Thomas  Cor- 
neille's  Dictionnaire  des  Arts  et  des  Sciences.  Bayle 
had  passed  from  Protestantism  to  Romanism  and 
then  back  again  to  Protestantism ;  had  written 
many  controversial  works,  mainly  in  advocacy  of 
the  principles  of  toleration;  had  become  a  professor 
of  philosophy  in  Rotterdam,  and  had  there  become 
involved  in  controversies  with  leading  Protestant 
writers,  especially  with  the  theologian,  Jurieu.  He 


Under  Lout's  XIV.  lii 

was  an  independent  thinker,  and  the  uncompromis- 
ing bigotry  of  tbe  rival  Churches  with  which  lie 
had  to  deal  led  him  to  skepticism.  His  style  is 
clear,  but  he  indulges  in  endless  digressions.  His 
Dictionary,  being  proscribed  in  Holland  and  France, 
naturally  obtained  a  wide  circulation  in  both  coun- 
tries. It  has  had  a  great  influence  on  the  literature 
and  philosophy  of  Europe.  Bayle's  private  char- 
acter was  excellent. 

During  the  latter  years  of  this  reign,  the  Due  de 
Saint-Simon  was  secretly  writing  his  Memoires. 
But,  as  he  continued  his  observations  into  the  next 
reign,  the  consideration  of  them  will  be  more  fit- 
tingly taken  up  in  another  part  of  this  sketch. 

Here  should  be  mentioned  Montfleury  (1640- 
1685),  the  son  of  an  actor  and  himself  a  famous 
actor,  as  well  as  author  of  several  comedies,  La 
Femme  Jv.ije  et  Partie,  La  Fille  Capitaine,  and 
L'Ecole  du  Jaloux.  La  Fontaine,  too,  as  a  writer 
of  comedy,  deserves  a.  separate  mention.  Le  Flo- 
rentin,  a  little  piece  written  to  sting  Lulli,  who  had 
rejected  an  opera  of  his  in  favor  of  Quinault's 
Alceste,  was  his  only  comedy  that  took  a  perma- 
nent place  on  the  French  stage.  Boursault  (1658— 
1701)  had  a  great  success  with  his  Le  Hercure 
yalant,  Esope  a  la  cour,  and  fisope  a  la  ville.  His 
Les  Mots  d  la  mode  makes  fun  of  words  newly 
brought  in  by  fashion.  Baron  (1655-1729)  has 
been  mentioned  in  the  sketch  of  Moliere.  He 
wrote  comedies  with  less  ability  than  he  played 
them.  Of  seven,  the  Homme  d  bonne  fortune  alone 
has  kept  the  stage. 


142  French  Literature. 


XL 

UNDEE  LOUIS  XV. 

Before  taking  a  final  leave  of  the  age  of  Louis 
XIV.,  it  will  be  well  to  mention  briefly  a  few 
writers,  not  heretofore  named,  who  properly  belong 
to  it : — 

Charles  Perrault  (1628-1703)  is  chiefly  known 
now  by  his  exquisite  Fairy  Tales.  He  was,  how- 
ever, the  author  of  many  other  and  more  serious 
works.  His  famous  controversy  with  Boileau,  on 
the  respective  merits  of  the  ancients  and  moderns, 
originated  in  a  poem  which  he  read  before  his  fellow 
Academicians,  entitled  Le  Sibcle  de  Louis  le  Grand 
or  The  Age  of  Louis  the  Great,  in  which  he  con- 
tended that  modern  authors  were  greater  than  the 
most  eminent  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  writers. 
He  seconded  this  poetical  claim  for  the  moderns  by 
the  publication  of  a  learned  treatise,  entitled  Par- 
allele  des  Ancients  et  des  Modernes,  or  Parallel  be- 
tween the  Ancients  and  Moderns.  Boileau  at- 
tacked him  and  his  propositions  in  his  Reflections 
on  ^LoTLg\rms,  (Reflexions  sur  Longin\  to  which  Per- 
rault replied  by  his  Defence  of  Women  (Apologie 
des  Femmes).  This  controversy  led  Perrault  to 
make  a  special  study  of  his  contemporaries,  which 
induced  him  to  write  his  Hommes  Illustres  du 
Sttcle  de  Louis  XIV.,  or  Illustrious  Men  of  the  Age 
of  Louis  XIV.  This  work  contains  two  hundred 
critical  biographies.  The  silly  controversy  about 
the  merits  of  the  ancients  and  moderns,  having 
passed  over  into  England  and  engaged  the  pens  of 
Temple,  Boyle,  Bentley,  Atterbury,  and  others, 
finally  gave  us  Swift's  Battle  of  the  Books. 

In  his  old  age  Perrault  produced  the  charming 


Under  Louis  XV.  143 

Contes  des  Fees,  which  he  was  stimulated  to  write 
by  the  delight  inspired  in  himself  and  his  little 
friends  by  the  Neapolitan  tales  of  Signer  Basile's 
Pentamerone.  Bluebeard,  The  Sleeping  Beauty, 
Puss  in  Boots,  Riquet  with  the  Tuft,  and  Little  Red 
Hiding  Hood  are  among  these  pleasant  creations,  or 
rather  revivals  of  old  folk-lore. 

Another  author  of  pleasing  fairy-tales  was  the 
Comtesse  d'Aunoy  (1650-1705),  to  whom  we  owe 
The  Yellow  Dwarf,  The  White  Cat,  and  Cherry 
and  Fair  Star.  Her  sentimental  novels,  Hippolyte 
and  Comte  de  Dug las  have  passed  into  oblivion,  and 
her  historical  memoirs  are  not  considered  trust- 
worthy. Along  with  these  should  be  mentioned 
Madame  Villeneuve's  Conies  Marines,  published  in 
1740,  in  which  appeare.d  the  charming  story  of 
Beauty  and  the  Beast. 

Two  oriental  scholars,  D'Herbelot  and  Galland, 
deserve  mention  as  aiding  in  the  delightful  task  of 
entertaining  the  young? 

Barthelemy  d'Herbelot  (1625-1 695)  was  professor 
of  Syriac  in  the  College  of  France.  His  Biblio- 
thZque  Orientale,  or  Eastern  Library,  was  published 
after  his  death  by  Galland.  This  work  contained 
a  great  store  of  information  about  the  manners  and 
customs  and  legends  of  the  Arabians,  Persians,  and 
Turks,  from  which  writers  fond  of  the  marvelous 
drew  their  material  for  a  vast  number  of  oriental 
tales.  Among  these  may  be  mentioned  the  Persian 
Tales,  of  Petit  de  la  Croix,  and  Gueullette's  Tartar 
Tales,  Chinese  Tales,  and  Mongol  Tales.  But  by  far 
the  richest  collection  was  Galland's  translation  of 
the  famous  Arabian  Nights'  Entertainments. 

Antoine  Galland  (1646-1715)  was  a  distinguished 
orientalist  and  numismatist.  Accompanying  the 
French  ambassador,  Nointel,  to  Constantinople,  he 
made  some  travel  in  the  East,  and,  after  twice  again 
visiting  those  lands,  he  became  professor  of  Arabic 
in  the  College  of  France.  Besides  his  great  trans- 
lation, he  wrote  several  works  on  the  East  and  on 


144  French  Literature. 

numismatics,  a  collection  of  Eastern  sayings,  and 
The  Indian  Tales  and  Fables  of  Bidpai  and  Lok- 
man. 

The  wonderful  tales  of  the  Thousand  and  one 
Nights  were  at  first  thought  to  be  the  invention  of 
Galland's  own  genius,  in  spite  of  his  assertion  that 
they  were  translated  from  the  Arabic.  But  it  has 
long  ago  been  well  ascertained  that  they  are  genu- 
ine Arabian  tales,  though  probably  originating 
from  various  sources,  Indian,  Persian,  Arabian,  and 
even  perhaps,  in  some  cases,  Greek.  The  Baron 
de  Sacy's  opinion  as  to  the  origin  of  the  book  is 
thus  stated : 

"It  appears  to  me  that  it  was  originally  written  in 
Syria,  and  in  the  vulgar  dialect ;  that  it  was  never  com- 
pleted by  its  author;  that,  subsequently,  imitators  en- 
deavored to  perfect  the  work,  either  by  the  insertion  of 
novels  already  known,  but  which  formed  no  part  of  the 
original  collection,  or  by  composing  some  themselves, 
with  more  or  less  talent,  whence  arise  the  great  varia- 
tions observable  among  the  different  MSS.  of  the  collec- 
tion ;  that  the  inserted  tales  were  added  at  different 
periods,  and  perhaps  in  different  countries,  but  chiefly  in 
Egypt ;  and,  lastly,  that  the  only  thing  which  can  be 
affirmed,  with  much  appearance  of  probability,  in  regard 
to  the  time  when  the  work  was  composed,  is — that  it  is 
not  very  old,  as  its  language  proves,  but  still  that,  when 
it  was  brought  out,  the  use  of  tobacco  and  coffee  was  un- 
known, since  no  mention  of  either  is  made  in  the  work." 

Louis  the  Great  left  behind  him  a  widow  who 
did  not  long  survive  him.  This  remarkable  woman, 
Francoise  D'Aubigne,  Marquise  de  Maintenon 
(1635-1719),  born  in  a  prison;  grand -daughter  of 
the  great  Huguenot  captain,  and  destined  to  be  the 
greatest  enemy  of  the  Huguenots ;  glad  to  escape 
from  poverty  by  marrying  at  the  age  of  sixteen  the 
crippled  Scarron ;  in  her  widowhood  rearing  the 
children  of  Louis  XIV.  by  his  mistress  Madame  de 
Montespan  ;  fascinating  the  monarch  and  becoming 
his  wife  because  she  would  not  be  his  mistress; 


Under  Louis  XV.  145 

unhappy  in  the  midst  of  splendor  and  power — this 
singular  child  or  varying  fortunes  and  of  a  charac- 
ter in  which  good  and  evil  were  curiously  mingled, 
belongs  to  literature  through  her  letters,  published 
in  nine  volumes  nearly  half  a  century  after  death. 
They  are  written  with  much  skill  and  evince  in- 
tellectual powers  of  no  common  order,  but  differ 
from  most  French  letters  in  being  serious  and 
reflective. 

The  Rtine  de  Golconde,  or  Queen  of  Golconda,  of 
the  Chevalier  de  Boufflers  (1644-1711)  ought  to  be 
mentioned,  as  well  as  his  Lettres  a  sa  Afore,  as  grace- 
fully written  and  pleasing.  He  was  also  the  author 
of  many  little  pieces  of  gay  poetry. 

David  Augustin  Drueys  (1640-1733)  renovated 
the  old  farce  of  Patelin,  and  also,  in  conjunction 
with  Jean  Palaprat,  produced  two  works,  Le  Grand- 
eur and  Le  Muet. 

When  Louis  XIV.  died  (1715),  his  great-grand- 
son came  to  the  throne  with  the  title  of  Louis  XV.; 
but  the  government  was  for  seven  years  conducted 
by  Philippe,  Due  D'Orleans,  as  Regent.  The  Car- 
dinal Dubois,  who  had  been  Philippe's  tutor  and 
had  corrupted  his  character,  became  prime  minis- 
ter. France  was  brought  to  the  verge  of  ruin  by  the 
Regent's  folly  in  authorizing  the  financial  schemes 
of  John  Law,  the  Scottish  adventurer.  The  de- 
bauchery which  the  Regent  had  made  fashiona- 
ble continued  to  characterize  the  court  of  the  King 
after  he  began  his  personal  reign.  Ruled  in  succes- 
sion by  Madame  de  Pompadour  and  Madame  du 
Barry,  Louis  engaged  in  inglorious  wars,  made  bad 
alliances  and  humiliating  treaties  of  peace,  coerced 
the  Parlements,  exhausted  the  resources  of  the 
country  to  enrich  vile  favorites,  and  left  his  grand- 
son, Louis  XVI.,  a  heritage  of  hatred  which  kept 
steadily  gathering  into  the  storm  which  was  to 
sweep  away  all  the  old  institutions  of  the  land. 

To  this  dissolute  period  belongs  the  poet,  Jean- 
Baptiste  Rousseau  (1670-1741),  who  must  not  be 
10 


146  French  Literature. 

confounded  with  the  sentimental  Jean  Jacques.  He 
produced  religious  poems  and  licentious  epigrams 
with  the  same  facility.  He  belonged  to  a  school 
which  is  traceable  to  Chapelle,  the  father  of  French 
epicurean  poetry.  Chapelle  (1626-1684),  the  con- 
temporary of  Moliere,  Racine,  and  Boileau,  indoc- 
trinated into  the  taste  for  voluptuous  song  the 
Abbe*  de  Chaulieu  and  the  Marquis  de  la  Fare,  and 
these  led  J.  B.  Eousseau  astray. 

Chaulieu  (1639-1720)  became  a  veritable  pagan 
in  sentiment,  and  was  called  the  Anacreon  of  the 
Temple.  There  is  much  charm  in  his  poems.  La 
Fare  (1644-1712)  was  inferior  as  a  poet  to  Chau- 
lieu, but  he  wrote  Memoir es,  of  which  historians 
have  gladly  availed  themselves. 

J.  B.  Rousseau,  who  followed  these  poets  in  their 
epicurean  vein,  produced  also  fine  odes  of  admir- 
able harmony,  and  was  the  introducer  of  the  can- 
tata into  French  literature.  He  also  attempted  the 
opera,  but  was  driven  from  this  field  by  the  successes 
of  Danchet,  La  Motte,  and  Fontenelle. 

Madame  Dacier,  the  learned  lady  of  this  age  who 
edited  so  many  classical  works,  had  a  hot  contro- 
versy with  La  Motte  on  the  merits  of  Homer;  and 
La  Motte  is  better  remembered  by  the  wit  which 
he  displayed  in  this  controversy  than  by  his  poetry. 
Fontenelle  came  to  La  Motte's  assistance  in  this  af- 
fair, while  Rousseau  warmly  espoused  the  other 
side.  But  this  was  an  insignificant  incident  in  the 
career  of  Fontenelle.  He  was  a  man  of  much 
greater  force  than  those  with  whom  I  have  just 
grouped  him. 

Bernard  le  Bovier  de  Fontenelle  (1657-1757), 
the  nephew  of  the  two  Corneilles,  Pierre  and 
Thomas,  at  first  followed  them  in  the  dramatic  ca- 
reer. But  his  Aspar  and  Idalie  having  failed,  he 
betook  himself  to  other  literary  fields.  Besides  his 
Entretiens  sur  la  pluralite  des  Mondes,  his  Histoire 
des  Oracles,  his  Histoire  de  V  Academic  des  Sciences, 
his  Eloyes  des  Savants^  and  other  scholarly  and  sci- 


Under  Louis  XV.  147 

entific  works,  he  produced  Psyche,  Bellerophon,  and 
other  operas,  a  musical  and  dramatic  pastoral  called 
Endymion,  and  a  number  of  comedies,  fables,  and 
epigrams.  At  the  age  of  ninety-two  he  still  wrote 
madrigals,  and  when  he  lay  on  his  death-bed,  hav- 
ing almost  completed  his  hundredth  year,  he  uttered 
his  last  bon  mot,  saying:  "I  do  not  suffer,  my 
friends;  but  I  feel  a  sort  of  difficulty  in  living  any 
longer."  He  was  a  great  social  favorite.  One  of 
those  ladies,  who  delighted  to  be  numbered  among 
his  friends  was  Madame  de  Staal,  whose  piquant 
Memoires  reveal  to  us  the  life  of  that  little  court  of 
the  Duchesse  du  Maine  at  Sceaux,  which  was  in 
opposition  to  the  court  of  the  Regent.  Another 
of  his  lady  friends  was  that  Marquise  de  Lambert, 
whose  salon  was  open  to  him  in  Paris,  and  whom 
we  know  as  a  moralist  through  her  Conseils  ad- 
dressed to  her  son  and  daughter. 

Quite  apart  from  these  shunners  of  the  dissolute 
revelry  of  the  Regent's  court  was  one  who  had  be- 
longed always  to  that  gay  circle  of  which  Bussy- 
Rabutin  and  Saint- Evremond  were  fair  specimens. 
This  was  the  Comte  de  Hamilton.  He  and  Saint- 
Evremond  were  both  about  equally  French  and 
English  at  different  periods  of  their  lives.  Saint- 
Evremond's  wit  had  got  him  into  trouble  and  forced 
him  to  spend  his  last  years  in  England.  Hamil- 
ton's fate  was  also,  from  other  causes,  to  make  him 
divide  his  life  between  France  and  England. 

Antoine,  Comte  de  Hamilton  (1646-1720),  sprung 
from  the  illustrous  Scottish  family  of  that  name, 
was  born  in  Ireland.  Brought  up  in  France  during 
the  English  Revolution,  he  returned  to  London 
at  the  Restoration.  The  Revolution  of  1688 
drove  him  again  to  France,  where  he  passed  the 
thirty  years  he  was  still  to  live.  Although  a  for- 
eigner, he  is  ranked  with  the  leading  French  mem- 
oir-writers, on  account  of  his  Memoires  du  Cheva- 
lier de  Grammont,  his  brother-in-law.  This  work 
is  a  sprightly  and  witty  picture  of  the  dissolute 


148  French  Literature. 

court  of  Charles  II.  of  England.  Hamilton  carries 
to  perfection  the  art  of  relating  little  trifles  in  such 
a  way  as  to  give  them  importance.  His  badinage, 
less  elegant  than  Voltaire's  is  perhaps  more  charm- 
ing, because  more  natural.  His  style  is  character- 
ized by  French  critics,  as  having  all  the  ease  and 
grace  of  the  best  conversation.  The  coolness  with 
which  he  narrates  the  foul  and  sometimes  inhuman 
incidents,  which  made  up  the  life  of  that  shameless 
court  of  the  Kestoration,  is  perhaps  the  strongest 
evidence  we  can  have  of  the  utter  corruption  of 
heart  and  mind  which  then  debased  the  society  in 
which  royalty  moved,  both  in  France  and  Eng- 
land. 

Turning  to  the  theatre,  we  find  this  intermediate 
period  which  fills  the  gap  between  Moliere  and 
Yoltaire  filled  by  Destouches,  Crebillon,  Lesage, 
Lafosse,  La  Grange-Chancel,  and  Marivaux. 

Destouches  (1680-1754)  was  particularly  success- 
ful in  the  comedy  of  character.  Le  Glorieux  is 
pronounced  by  Geruzez  to  be  almost  a  masterpiece, 
and  Le  Philosophe  marie  to  be  but  little  inferior  to 
Le  Glorieux. 

Crebillon,  the  dramatist,  must  be  distinguished 
from  his  son,  the  romancer,  whom  Sterne  bantered 
for  a  contest  in  which  each  should  try  to  shock  the 
public  by  indecency  more  strikingly  than  his  rival. 
The  elder  Crebillon  made  his  sensations  by  an 
appeal  to  another  vulgar  taste  of  human  nature. 

Prosper  Jolyot  de  Crebillon  (1674-1762)  was 
born  at  Dijon.  His  tragic  vein  was  not  deficient 
in  blood  at  least.  He  took  pleasure  in  painting 
crime,  and  his  Electre,  Atree,  Idomenee,  are  all  trag- 
edies of  the  frightful  kind.  His  Rhadamiste  et 
Zenobie  had  a  great  success,  and  is  considered  by 
French  critics  as  really  fine,  true  to  nature  and  ter- 
rible at  the  same  time. 

About  this  time  Lesage  produced  his  Turcaret. 
He  had  already  written  his  satirical  romance,  Le 
Diable  boiteux. 


Under  Louis  XV.  149 

Alain  Rene  Lesage  (1668-1747)  was  born  at 
Sarzeau,  in  what  is  now  the  department  of  Morbi- 
han.  From  a  lawyer  he  became  a  writer.  Turca- 
ret  was  so  bitter  a  satire  on  the  financiers  of  the 
day,  that  he  is  said  to  have  been  offered  100,000 
francs  to  suppress  it,  but  he  refused  to  do  so.  His 
great  work,  however,  was  the  immortal  Gil  Bias 
of  Santillane.  There  he  paints  human  nature  at 
large,  and  the  keenness  of  observation,  wit,  fertility 
of  invention,  variety  and  picturesqueness  of  the  in- 
cidents, are  only  equaled  by  the  ease  and  anima- 
tion of  the  style. 

But  there  was  another  student  of  human  nature, 
who  was  at  this  time  recording  in  private  his  ob- 
servations in  a  very  different  mood  and  in  a  differ- 
ent manner,  thougn  with  as  trenchant  a  burin. 
This  was  the  Due  de  Saint-Simon,  who  spent  his 
last  years  in  composing  those  Memoires,  which  are 
among  the  finest  in  French  literature. 

Louis  de  Rouvroi,  Due  de  Saint-Simon,  (1675- 
1755)  belonged  to  a  noble  family  which  claimed 
descent  from  Charlemagne.  Pride  was  the  master- 
principle  of  his  character,  his  ruling  passion  through 
life.  Fanatical  on  the  subject  of  aristocratic  rights 
and  privileges,  he  was  as  hostile  almost  to  the 
court  as  to  the  middle  class  of  society.  "  He  was 
as  nearly,"  says  Macaulay,  "  an  oppositionist  as 
any  man  of  his  time.  His  disposition  was  proud, 
bitter,  and  cynical.  In  religion  he  was  a  Jansenist : 
in  politics,  a  less  hearty  royalist  than  most  of  his 
neighbors.  His  opinions  and  his  temper  had  pre- 
served him  from  the  illusions  which  the  demeanor 
of  Louis  produced  on  others.  He  neither  loved 
nor  respected  the  King."  If  such  were  his  feelings 
toward  Louis  XI V.,  they  were  even  more  unfriendly 
to  the  infamous  governments  which  came  after  the 
great  monarch. 

To  such  a  man  it  was  a  dark  joy  to  paint  the 
true  characters  of  those  whom  he  looked  upon 
daily  with  scorn.  Pluming  himself  on  his  penetra- 


150  French  Literature 

tion,  and  enjoying  with  an  artist's  rapture  the  skill 
with  which  he  could  secretly  transfer  in  burning 
words  to  his  manuscript  the  conceptions  which  his 
mind  had  formed  of  the  characters  revealing  them- 
selves unconsciously  before  that  questioning  eye, 
he  produced  for  later  generations  a  vast  gallery  of 
pen-pictures  which  vividly  illustrate  that  age  of 
vice  and  worthlessness. 

"The  Due  de  Saint-Simon,"  says  Bulwer-Lytton,  "is 
partly  the  Tacitus,  partly  the  Juvenal  of  the  old  French 
regime.  Of  his  style  it  may  be  said,  as  it  was  of  Ter- 
tullian's,  that 'it  is  like  ebony,  ^at  once  dark  and  splendid.' 
He  stands  amid  the  decay  of  a  perishing  social  system. 
The  thorough  rot  of  the  old  regime  is  clear  to  his  sancti- 
monious and  solemn  eye,  through  4he  cracks  of  the  satin- 
wood  which  veneers  its  worm-eaten  substance  and 
bungled  joinery.  I  am  far  from  saying  that  men,  on  the 
whole,  were  rather  good  than  otherwise,  and  women,  on 
the  whole,  rather  better  than  the  men,  in  the  world  which 
Saint-Simon  knew;  but  his  world  was  very  contracted. 
His  personal  vanity  served  to  contract  it  still  more. 
Marmontel  said  of  him,  '  that  all  which  he  saw  in  the  nation 
was  the  noblesse  ;  all  that  he  saw  in  the  noblesse  was  the  peer- 
age; and  all  that  he  saw  in  the  peerage  was  himself — an 
exaggerated  judgment,  as  definitions  of  character  con- 
densed into  sarcasms  usually  are,  but  not  without  a  large 
foundation  of  truth." 

The  Souvenirs  of  Madame  de  Caylus  describe  the 
same  society.  Marthe  Marguerite  de  Villette  de 
Murcay,  Marquise  de  Caylus  (1673-1729)  was  a 
descendant  of  the  D'Aubigne'  family,  converted  to 
Eomanism  by  her  kinswoman,  Madame  de  Mainte- 
non.  She  was  famous  as  a  leader  of  society,  and 
was  complimented  by  Racine  in  the  prologue  to  his 
play  of  Esther.  Her  worthless  husband  having 
died,  she  offended  tlie  King — then  in  his  highly 
moral  stage  under  Madame  de  Maintenon's  influ- 
ence— by  becoming  the  mistress  of  the  Due  de  Ville- 
roi,  but  on  the  death  of  Madame  de  Maintenon 
she  was  allowed  to  return  to  the  court,  over  which 


Under  Louis  XV.  151 

the  Regent  and  Dubois  were  by  that  time  presiding. 
In  her  memoirs  she  testifies  to  Louis  the  XIV.'s 
excellence  in  language. 

We  have  seen  Port  Royal  destroyed  against  the 
protests  of  Pascal.  It  left,  however,  three  disciples, 
whose  virtues  were  to  prove  the  excellence  of  the 
school  in  which  they  were  trained.  These  were 
the  younger  Racine,  Rollin,  and  Daguesseau,  warm 
friends  and  steady  believers,  in  an  age  of  faithless- 
ness and  skepticism. 

Lonis  Racine  (1692-1763),  son  of  Jean,  was  a 
gentle  poet,  more  remarkable  for  being  one  of  the 
first  among  his  countrymen  to  study  English  liter- 
ature, than  for  his  own  productions,  which  lack 
vigor.  He  attempted  the  translation  of  Milton's 
Paradise  Lost. 

Charles  Rollin  (1661-1741)  was  principal  of  the 
College  of  Beauvais  at  the  time  of  the  elder 
Racine's  death,  and  it  was  to  his  care  that  young  Louis 
was  intrusted  by  -iris  father.  Rollin's  whole  life 
was  passed  in  the  business  of  education,  and  he 
was  twice  Rector  of  the  University  of  Paris.  His 
Histoire  ancienne,  though  for  several  generations  a 
most  popular  work,  has  been  wholly  superseded  by 
the  greater  accuracy  of  modern  methods  in  the 
study  of  history,  and  a  philosophic  treatment  of  the 
subject  which  never  entered  into  the  thoughts  of 
Rollin.  His  utter  ignorance  of  the  principles  of 
historical  criticism  makes  him  regard  all  ancient 
authorities  as  of  about  equal  value.  Villemain, 
however,  praises  him  highly  both  as  man  and  his- 
torian. 

Henri  Frangois  Daguesseau  (1668-1751),  Chan- 
cellor of  France,  was  the  great  jurist  of  his  age. 
He  lost  his  high  office  on  account  of  his  firm  oppo- 
sition to  the  wild  schemes  of  the  speculator  Law. 
In  his  retirement  he  composed  his  Considerations  sur 
les  Ifonnaies  and  the  Mtmoire  sur  le  commerce  des  ac- 
tions de  le  compaynie  des  Indes,  profound  treatises  on 
political  economy.  When  the  Mississippi  scheme 


152  French  Literature. 

failed,  L»h,guesseau  was  recalled  and  restored  to  his 
place.  Eesisting  the  Regent  again,  when  Dubois 
was  allowed  to  take  precedence  of  the  Princes  of 
the  Blood,  he  was  a  second  time  sent  to  his  country 
house  at  Fresne.  He  was,  however,  restored  to  his 
functions,  and  exercised  them  until  when  more  than 
eighty  years  of  age  he  retired  from  his  high  post. 
His  eloquence,  learning,  probity,  and  wonderful 
memory  are  warmly  praised  by  Saint-Simon,  in  a 
passage  in  which  he  strongly  censures  him  for  those 
very  political  virtues  which  to  other  minds  and  in 
freer  lands  so  greatly  enchance  the  glory  of  his 
character.  To  his  works  already  mentioned  should 
be  added  his  Meditetions,  his  Metaphysiques,  the 
Essai  dune  Institution  au  Droit  Public,  an  unfin- 
ished work  called  Reflexions  diverses  sur  Jesus 
Christ,  and  the  famous  Mercuriales. 

These  last  were  set  discourses,  delivered  either 
by  the  Procureur  General  or  one  of  his  substitutes, 
the  Advocats-Gene'raux,  at  the  opening  of  the  terms 
of  the  Parlement.  It  was  in  the  exercise  of  this 
office  that  Daguesseau  delivered  the  eighteen  Mer- 
curiales, which  are  published  in  his  works.  These 
discourses  were  lectures  on  various  points  of  official 
duty,  to  which  the  Parlement  was  bound  needfully 
to  listen.  Daguesseau's  subjects  are  the  indepen- 
dence of  the  advocate,  the  love  of  the  profession, 
the  dignity  of  the  magistrate,  and  other  qualities 
required  of  him.  Hugh  S.  Legard,  in  the  account 
of  him  which  he  gave  in  the  Southern  Review  says: 

"  His  mind  and  his  heart  were  equally  and  perfectly 
well  disciplined.  He  had  received  the  sort  of  education 
which  metaphysicians  have  mentioned  as  the  best  practi- 
cal fruit  of  mental  philosophy.  All  the  powers  and  ca- 
pacities of  his  intellectual  and  moral  being  seem  to  have 
been  cultivated  with  a  view  to  its  highest  perfection.  His 
was  that  harmony  of  character,  the  music  of  the  well-at- 
tuned soul,  in  which  the  Platonists  in  their  dreams  of  that 
perfection  make  it  to  consist.  Truth  and  beauty — eter- 
nal truth,  the  unblemished  form  of  ideal  beauty  which 


Under  Louis  XV.  158 

can  neither  vary  nor  fade  away — were  never  revealed  in 
greater  purity  and  loveliness  to  the  vision  of  any  man. 
In  those  admirable  discourses — the  Mercuriahs — Dagues- 
seau  has  embodied,  so  to  speak,  his  conceptions  of  excel- 
lence, and  not  the  mere  naked  conceptions,  as  a  metaphy- 
sician might  have  done,  but  glowing  with  life,  radiant  with 
glory,  clothed  in  such  shapes  and  hues  as  genius  is  sure 
to  bestow  upon  the  objects  of  its  '  desiring  phantasy.' 
His  works  are  justly  pronounced,  by  his  last  editor,  one 
of  the  best  courses  of  lectures  on  rhetoric  and  morals, 
that  is  anywhere  to  be  found.  Throughout  the  whole 
range  of  his  inquiries — involving  all  the  subjects  that  are 
most  interesting  to  man  as  a  social  and  responsible  being 
— religion,  ethics,  jurisprudence,  political  justice,  and  po- 
litical economy,  literature,  metaphysics — the  same  en- 
larged views,  the  same  refined  criticism,  the  same  sound 
judgment  are  everywhere  displayed,  in  a  style,  which  we 
cannot  better  characterize  than  by  saying  that  it  is  in 
every  respect  worthy  of  the  age  of  Racine  and  Boileau 
and  Bossuet  and  Fenelon.'' 

Pure  as  Daguesseau  in  character,  but  exceedingly 
unlike  him  in  judgment,  was  the  abbe  de  Saint- 
Pierre  (1658-174:3).  Romantic  and  impracticable 
schemes  were  the  dream  of  his  life.  He  must  not 
be  confounded  with  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre,  the 
author  of  Paul  et  Virginie,  who  lived  a  century 
later.  The  Abbe  de  Saint-Pierre's  numerous  writ- 
ings, setting  forth  all  sorts  of  projects  for  the  ad- 
vancement of  society  and  the  furtherance  of  human 
happiness,  have  all  passed  out  of  date.  But  some 
of  his  ideas  were  carried  out  after  the  expulsion  of 
the  Bourbons  from  the  throne.  These  dreams  of 
political  and  social  reform  were  supplemented  by 
Quesnay's  dissertations  on  political  economy  and 
Montesquieu's  thoughts  on  the  philosophy  of  his- 
tory. 

Frangois  Quesnay  (1694-1774),  eminent  as  a  phy- 
sician, is  noted  as  the  earliest  writer  on  political 
economy  and  as  the  inventor  of  the  term.  His 
principal  works  were  Maximes  Generales  du  Gou- 
vernement  Economique  d'un  Royaume  Ayricole,  Le 


154  French  Literature. 

Droit  Naturel,  Probllmes  Economiques,  and  Dia- 
logues sur  le  Commerce  et  sur  les  Travaux  des  Arti- 
sans. He  was  also  one  of  the  contributors  to  the 
famous  Encyclopedic,  edited  by  D'Alembert  and 
Diderot. 

Montesquieu's  place  in  the  thought  of  this  age  is 
a  high  one.  His  views  were  noble  and  his  scope  of 
view  was  wide.  His  learning  was  sufficient  to 
serve  as  a  basis  for  his  sound  judgment  to  build 
upon,  and  his  imagination  served  him  well  in  ena- 
bling him  to  bring  charmingly  witty  satire  to  the 
aid  of  his  good  sense  and  just  discrimination  in  the 
sphere  of  political  thought. 

Charles  de  Sconedat,  Baron  de  la  B rede  et  de 
Montesquieu  (1689-1755)  was  born  at  his  father's 
chateau  of  Brede,  near  Bordeaux.  He  became 
early  in  life  President  of  the  Parlement  of  Bor- 
deaux. His  first  work  was  the  famous  Persian  Let- 
ters (Lettres  Persanes),  a  satire  still  diverting  to  the 
modern  reader  from  its  exquisite  humor  and  the 
pungency  of  its  criticisms  of  contemporary  man- 
ners and  customs,  as  well  as  from  the  variety  of 
its  topics.  These  keen  thrusts  at  folly,  sometimes 
taking  the  neatest  epigrammatic  form,  are  put  into 
the  supposed  correspondence  of  a  Persian  resident 
in  Paris. 

Montesquieu  had  been  anticipated,  in  this  idea 
of  imagining  a  foreigner's  surprise  at  the  customs 
of  the  country,  by  Dufresny  (1648-1724),  the  writer 
of  comedies,  in  his  Amusements  serieux  et  comiques. 
But  Montesquieu's  execution  of  the  idea  is  far 
richer,  stronger,  and  more  subtle.  In  invention, 
wit,  humor  of  contrast,  political  insight,  compre- 
hensiveness in  scope  of  his  satire,  he  has  so  enlarged 
and  enriched  the  conception  as  to  have  made  it 
fairly  his  own. 

Travel  abroad,  especially  in  England,  aided 
greatly  in  enlightening  Montesquieu's  mind  on 
political  questions.  It  was  after  his  return  from 
England  that  he  published  the  work  which  showed 


Under  Louis  XV.  155 

the  thoughtfulness  and  vigorof  his  mind ;  his  Causes 
of  the  Greatness  and  Decline  of  the  Romans  (Con- 
siderations sur  les  causes  de  la  grandeur  des  Romains 
et  de  leur  decadence).  The  style  of  this  work  is 
marked  by  a  sententious  precision  of  statement 
which  is  brilliant  and  effective.  A  work,  however, 
of  fur  higher  aim  was  his  Spirit  of  Laws(£s/?n£  des 
Lois),  which  sought  to  examine  and  describe  in  a 
systematic  manner  the  relation  between  the  laws  of 
different  states  and  the  genius  and  fortunes  of  the 
races  constituting  them.  The  Spirit  of  Laws  was 
immensely  popular,  especially  in  England. 

In  one  part  of  his  subject,  the  origin  of  the 
French  monarchy,  Montesquieu  had  been  preceded 
by  two  antagonistic  writers,  the  Cornte  de  Boulain 
villiers  (1658-1722)  and  the  Abbe  Dubos  (167<K 
1742),  both  of  whom  he  handsomely  complimented, 
while  differing  from  the  views  of  both.  The 
Abbe  Dubos  had  produced  an  excellent  work  in  his 
Reflexions  sur  la  pojsie  et  la  peinture,  which  might 
well  be  set  off  against  his  vagaries  on  the  subject 
of  the  philosophy  of  history. 

Montesquieu's  personal  character  was  as  noble  as 
his  works  were  strong  and  sensible.  His  tempera- 
ment was  sunny  and  sweet.  It  is  given  to  few  men, 
as  Geruzez  remarks,  to  say  as  Montesquieu  did : 
"  Every  day  I  wake  up  to  see  the  light  again  with 
an  ineffable  joy." 

He  delighted  in  solitary  reflection,  and  yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  few  social  spirits  have  found  greater 
pleasure  in  intercourse  with  their  fellows  than  he. 
D'Alembert  testifies  to  his  charm  in  society,  com- 
menting on  his  genial  gaiety,  his  agreeable  powers 
in  conversation,  his  wit  free  from  bitterness  and 
sarcasm,  his  skill  in  story -telling,  and  his  occasional 
fits  of  absence  of  mind  made  amusing  by  his 
pleasant  way  of  recovering  himself. 


156  French  Literature. 


XII. 

VOLTAIRE. 

IN  judging  a  man's  character,  it  is  unwise  and 
unjust  to  separate  him  from  his  age.  It  is  pecul- 
iarly fitting  that  he  should  be  judged  by  his  age, 
when,  as  in  the  case  of  Voltaire,  his  is  the  greatest 
nameof  his  age.  His  varied  excellence,  his  immense 
influence,  his  prolonged  period  of  intellectual  work, 
entitle  him  to  an  extraordinary  place  in  the  litera- 
ture of  his  country.  On  the  other  hand,  his  open 
unbelief,  the  mockery  which  he  directed  against 
everything  held  sacred  by  others,  the  bitterness  of 
his  assaults  upon  Christianity,  have  combined  to 
give  him  a  bad  eminence,  and  to  fill  the  minds  of 
many  good  men  with  a  horror  of  him  and  his 
writings. 

But,  when  we  come  to  look  deeply  into  the  his- 
tory of  his  times,  it  is  easy  to  see  how  a  mind, 
clear,  subtle,  bold,  and  naturally  honest,  was 
brought  to  indignant  revolt  against  such  religion 
as  he  saw  around  him — the  horrible  hypocrisy  of 
Louis  XIV.'s  court  in  those  later  years  when 
Madame  de  Maintenon  was  making  the  outward 
profession  of  piety  fashionable — while  its  lack  of 
depth  kept  it  from  seeking  the  truth  for  itself  with 
vital  earnestness.  For,  brilliant  as  was  Voltaire's 
intellect,  it  had  no  capacity  for  original  thought. 

But,  behind  this  passion  against  the  frauds  which 
he  took  to  be  religion — and  this  passion  was  really 
a  form  of  his  ardent  enthusiasm  for  the  principles 
of  toleration — there  were,  under  all  his  frivolity 
and  vanity,  some  noble  traits  in  Voltaire's  charac- 
ter. The  courage,  the  skill,  the  steady  obstinacy, 
with  which  he  defended  and  rescued  the  unfortu- 


Voltaire.  157 

nate  ^amily  of  Galas  from  the  furious  bigots  of 
Toulouse ;  the  intrepidity  with  which  he  opposed 
the  fanaticism  which  had  cut  out  the  tongue  of  poor 
La  Barre ;  the  wit  and  penetration  which  exposed 
the  wretched  mask  of  piety  worn  by  those  to 
whom  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  was 
due,  ought  to  weigh  for  something  in  the  scale 
against  that  ribaldry  and  blasphemy  at  which  good 
men  rightly  shudder.  There  was  something  sound 
about  the  heart  of  that  man,  who  could  for  years 
wear  mourning  on  the  anniversary  of  the  massacre 
of  St.  Bartholomew's  Day,  and  whose  fury  at  the 
thought  of  the  shameful  scenes  enacted  then  made 
those  who  lived  about  him  declare  that  he  actually- 
had  a  fever  on  each  recurrence  of  the  day.  Indeed, 
the  strongest  unselfish  feeling  of  his  heart,  a  feeling 
that  seems  to  have  really  amounted  to  a  passion,  was 
the  hatred  of  intolerance.  It  was  his  strongest  virtue, 
and  it  gathered  other  virtues  about  it,  for  neither 
vices  nor  virtues  dwell  alone.  It  led  him  to  do 
justice  to  Saint  Louis,  in  spite  of  his  scorn  for  the 
Middle  Ages — of  which,  indeed,  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury was  profoundly  ignorant;  and  to  Henri  IV., 
because  that  monarch  preferred  the  peace  of  his 
country  to  the  uncertain  triumph  of  the  creed  for 
which  he  had  fought. 

Nor  was  his  tolerance  the  fruit  of  total  indiffer- 
ence in  religious  matters.  He  turned  away  in  dis- 
gust from  the  atheism  of  D'Holbach  and  Lamettrie, 
Grimm  and  Diderot.  He  was,  in  truth,  a  sincere 
deist,  and  always  spoke  with  reverence  of  the 
Supreme  Ruler  of  the  universe.  His  disbelief  in 
Christianity  was  the  natural  result  of  the  corrupt 
form  of  Christianity  which  was  all  that  the  society 
of  his  day  had  to  show  him  in  the  way  of  religious 
life. 

Francois  Marie  Arouet  (1694-1778),  the  younger 
son  of  the  Sieur  Arouet,  who  owned,  it  is  said,  a 
small  estate  called  Voltaire — though,  according  to 
Garlyle,  the  name  is  simply  an  anagram  of  A 


158  French  Literature. 

le  jeune — v9u,s  born  at  Chatenay,  near  Sceaux.  His 
mother,  Marguerite  d'Aumart,  was  of  a  noble  fam- 
ily of  Poitou.  It  was  not  until  he  was  twenty 
years  of  age  that  he  assumed  the  name  of  Voltaire. 
His  father  was  able  to  give  him  a  good  edu- 
cation and  leave  him  a  competent  fortune. 
He  was  early  introduced  by  his  godfather, 
the  Abbe  de  Chateauneuf,  into  fashionable  society, 
and  especially  to  the  celebrated  Ninon  de  1'Enclos, 
the  beautiful,  graceful,  witty,  and  accomplished 
Aspasia  of  her  age.  The  mistress,  in  succession,  of 
most  of  the  great  men  of  her  long  life,  she  was  yet 
admired  by  the  most  respectable  women  among  her 
contemporaries  as  a  model  of  taste  and  elegance. 
Her  mental  powers  were  such,  that  Scarron, 
Moliere,  and  La  Eochefoucauld  are  said  to  have  con- 
sulted her  before  giving  the  final  shape  to  some 
of  their  work. 

She  was  now  no  longer  young,  but  still  held  her 
place  in  society  by  her  many  charms.  Indeed,  she 
had  won  a  fresh  popularity  by  her  refusal  to  accept 
the  offers  of  her  old  friend,  Madame  de  Maintenon, 
to  introduce  her  at  court,  provided  she  would  be- 
come devout.  The  gay  world  outside  the  court 
honored  her  for  this  honesty  in  vice,  for  it  was 
thought  a  degrading  hypocrisy — as  in  fact  it  was — 
to  be  devout  at  Louis's  court,  where  fashion  had 
put  on  that  mask  so  lately.  This  remarkable 
woman  was  eighty -five  when  Voltaire  was  presented 
to  her.  But  the  boy  of  twenty  pleased  her.  As 
Bulwer  Lytton  says: — 

"  Ninon  de  1'Enclos  took  a  fancy  to  this  brilliant 
boy  ;  Ninon  de  1'Enclos  took  a  fancy  to  a  great  many 
brilliant  boys,  much  more  adapted  to  strike  the  eye  and 
the  senses  of  an  antiquated  beauty  than  the  spindle- 
shanked  son  of  the  notary  Arouet ;  but  Ninon  distin- 
guished young  Arouet  from  other  brilliant  boys  in  this 

she  left  him  two  thousand  francs.  The  youth  destined  to 
convulse  nations .  knew  by  intuition  that  a  man  who 
would  raise  himself  into  a  power  should  begin  by  secur- 


Voltaire.  159 

ing  a  pecuniary  independence.  It  has  been  said  of  some 
writers  that,  from  the  first,  they  always  tenderly  nursed 
their  fame.  Voltaire  did  not  do  that  ;  he  sported  with 
his  fame,  but  he  always  tenderly  nursed  his  fortune.  He 
early  foresaw  that  his  future  life  would  be,  as  he  defined 
it  later,  a  combat,  and  accordingly  took  care  betimes  to 
provide  himself  with  the  sinews  of  war.  By  skilful  spec- 
ulations in  the  commerce  of  Cadiz,  and  in  the  purchase 
of  corn  in  Barbary — still  more  happily  by  obtaining, 
through  what  we  should  now  call  a  job,  an  interest  dans 
les  vivres  de  farmee  I'ltalie,  which  brought  him  in 
800,000  francs,  he  established  a  capital  which,  as  he 
invested  it  in  life  annuities,  yielded  an  income  far  above 
that  enjoyed  by  the  average  number  of  the  half-ruined 
nobles  of  France." 

But,  before  the  period  of  these  financial  successes, 
he  had  offended  his  father  by  his  verse- writing  and 
frequenting  gay  society,  besides  falling  into  a  love- 
scrape  at  the  Hague  when  there  with  the  Marquis 
de  Chateauneuf  ambassador  to  Holland;  had  re- 
gained his  fatlfer's  favor  by  consenting  to  enter  an 
attorney's  office  ;  had  been  suspected  of  writing  a 
political  satire  on  the  government  of  Louis  XIV., 
then  lately  deceased  ;  and  had  been  sent  to  the 
Bastille.  There  he  finished  his  tragedy  of  (Edipe 
and  began  the  poem  called  at  first  La  Ligue,  which 
appeared  afterwards  as  the  Henriade. 

Released  from  prison  on  the  establishment  of  his 
innocence,  his  CEdipe  was  performed  in  1718,  and 
met  with  brilliant  success.  It  was  really  an  able 
play,  and  would  have  been  finer  still,  had  not  the 
wretched  taste  of  the  day  and  the  insistance  of  the 
players  who  knew  the  public  taste,  forced  Voltaire 
to  mingle  with  the  terror  and  horror  of  his  Greek 
subject  the  incongruity  of  a  love  story.  In  the 
plays  with  which  he  next  tried  his  fortune  before 
the  Parisian  audiences,  he  was  not  so  successful. 

Meanwhile  he  had  been  to  Holland  again,  and 
before  his  return  to  France  had  made  at  Brussels 
the  acquaintance  of  the  poet  Rousseau,  who  then 


160  French  Literature. 

resided  t^ere.  They  soon  quarreled,  however. 
Shortly  after,  a  dispute  at  the  dinner-table  of  the 
Due  de  Sulli  with  the  Chevalier  de  Kohan  resulted 
in  the  latter  employing  his  lackeys  to  waylay  and 
beat  Voltaire.  On  Voltaire's  challenging  him  to 
fight,  the  despicable  courtier  procured  a  lettre  de 
cachet  to  be  issued,  by  which  his  adversary  was 
consigned  for  the  second  time  to  the  Bastille. 

Released  at  the  end  of  six  months,  with  orders  to 
quit  Paris,  he  withdrew  to  England.  This  visit, 
like  the  similar  one  of  Montesquieu,  had  impor- 
tant bearings  on  his  future  political  and  philo- 
sophical thought.  Voltaire  was  much  struck  with 
the  practical  workings  of  the  English  Constitution. 
He  learned  something  too  of  the  scientific  work  of 
Newton,  the  metaphysical  speculations  of  Locke, 
Shaftesbury,  and  Bolingbroke,  and  the  literature  at 
the  head  of  which  even  the  men  of  that  age  of 
"  town-wits  "  reckoned  that  monstrous  Shakspeare 
whose  genius  neither  they  nor  Voltaire  could  ever 
comprehend. 

Returning  to  France  at  the  end  of  two  years,  he 
met  in  the  gay  Parisian  circles  a  fascinating  Mar- 
quise of  twenty-four,  to  whom  he  attached  himself. 
This  lady,  the  wife  of  the  Marquis  du  Chatelet,  had, 
as  Mademoiselle  Gabrielle  Emilie  de  Breteuil,  been 
of  great  assistance  to  the  gambling  ladies  of  the 
court  by  her  wonderful  calculating  powers.  Mar- 
ried while  a  mere  child  to  a  man  many  years  older 
than  herself,  and  living  in  a  society  that  rather 
plumed  itself  on  its  immoralities,  she  accepted  Vol- 
taire's addressea  The  debts  of  the  husband  being 
heavy  enough  to  force  him  to  economy,  he  deter- 
mined to  retire  to  his  estate  of  Cirey  in  Cham- 
pagne. Voltaire,  who  had  lent  him  money,  and 
was  on  excellent  terms  with  him,  made  one  of  the 
country  party.  The  Marquis  did  not  remain  long 
in  his  rural  retreat,  though  he  would  occasionally 
leave  Paris  for  a  brief  visit  to  the  little  establish- 
ment at  Cirey. 


Voltaire.  161 

In  this  seclusion  Voltaire  seems  to  have  passed 
his  happiest  years.  Here  he  studied  physical  and 
mathematical  science  with  Madame  du  Chatelet, 
and  composed  most  of  his  philosophical  works. 
He  also  wrote  here  his  Zaire,  Ahire,  Mahomet,  and 
the  Histoire  de  Charles  XII.  In  1737,  the  subject 
of  the  prize  essay  to  be  furnished  the  Academy  of 
Science  was  The  Nature  of  Fire  and  its  Propagation. 
Both  Voltaire  and  Madame  du  Chatelet  competed 
for  the  prize,  but  neither  he  nor  she  was  successful. 
Their  essays,  however,  were  printed  as  a  mark  of 
approval.  The  prize  was  gained  by  the  great  sci- 
entist Euler.  The  paper  prepared  by  Voltaire  is 
considered,  by  so  high  an  authority  in  scientific 
matters  as  Lord  Brougham,  as  indicating  his  pos- 
session of  the  scientific  genius  in  a  high  degree. 
His  interest  in  science  and  his  Lettres  sur  lesAnylais 
did  a  great  work  in  widening  the  views  of  his 
countrymen  and  opening  up  to  them  new  fields  of 
effort. 

To  wean  Madame  du  Chatelet  from  her  distaste 
for  historical  studies,  he  sketched  out  a  great  plan 
of  history  and  began  his  Essai  sur  les  Mwurs.  This 
is  really  a  sketch  of  the  history  of  civilization  from 
the  time  of  Charlemagne,  and  with  all  its  faults, 
and  especially  its  failure  to  trace  the  beneficent 
effects  of  Christianity  on  the  corrupt  Roman  world 
and  the  barbaric  world  of  the  Teutonic  invaders  of 
the  empire,  it  possesses  great  merits.  It  is,  in  the 
main,  candid,  just,  and  generous  in  its  treatment  of 
men  and  races. 

Madame  du  Chatelet's  death  in  1748  brought 
this  part  of  Voltaire's  life  to  a  close.  About  this 
time  an  affront  to  his  pride  that  stung  him  to  the 
quick  made  him  desirous  of  leaving  France.  The 
small  wits  of  the  day,  eager  to  spite  him,  found  out 
a  way  to  wound  his  self-love.  His  place  as  incon- 
testably  the  first  of  French  tragic  poets  was  assailed. 
"  Old  Crebillon,"  says  Macaulay,  "  who,  many  years 
before,  had  obtained  some  theatrical  success,  and 
11 


162  French  Literature. 

who  had  long  been  forgotten,  came  forth  from  his 
garret  in  one  of  the  meanest  lanes  near  the  Rue  St. 
Antoine,  and  was  welcomed  by  the  acclamations  of 
envious  men  of  letters,  and  of  a  capricious  populace. 
A  thing  called  Catiline,  which  he  had  written  in 
his  retirement,  was  acted  with  boundless  applause. 
Of  this  execrable  piece  it  is  sufficent  to  say,  that 
the  plot  turns  on  a  love  affair,  carried  on  in  all  the 
forms  of  Scudery,  between  Catiline,  whose  confidant 
is  the  Praetor  Lentulus,  and  Tullia,  the  daughter  of 
Cicero.  The  theatre  resounded  with  acclamations. 
The  king  pensioned  the  successful  poet ;  and  the 
coffee-houses  pronounced  that  Voltaire  was  a  clever 
man,  but  that  the  real  tragic  inspiration,  the  celes- 
tial fire  which  glowed  in  Corneille  and  Racine,  was 
to  be  found  in  Cre'billon  alone." 

Voltaire's  furious  anger  drove  him  to  the  folly 
of  competing  with  Cre'billon.  His  plays  were  on 
the  same  subjects  as  those  Cre'billon  had  treated, 
and  were  not  very  well  received.  Frederick  the 
Great's  flattering  invitations  to  come  to  Berlin 
reaching  him  at  this  time,  when  he  was  disgusted 
with  Paris  and  also  released  by  Madame  du  Chate- 
let's  death  from  ties  of  any  kind  in  France,  he  ac- 
cepted in  an  evil  hour  the  Prussian  King's  overtures. 
He  had  complained  of  absolutism  in  union  with 
the  hypocrisy  of  a  religion  such  as  that  Madame 
de  Maintenon  had  forced  on  the  court  of  Louis  XIV. 
He  had  suffered  from  that  absolutism  two  imprison- 
ments in  the  Bastille,  and  exile  after  the  second. 
He  was  now  to  experience  the  tender  mercies  of 
absolutism  associated  with  infidelity  and  with  the 
name  of  philosophy. 

But  the  treatment  which  he  received  from  Fred- 
erick, however  disgraceful  to  the  King,  was  richly 
deserved  by  Voltaire  ;  for  by  his  own  confession  his 
insincerity  from  the  very  beginning  of  their  inter- 
course fully  equaled  that  of  the  Prussian  monarch. 
It  is  needless  to  go  in  detail  through  the  whole 
story.  It  is  told  by  Macaulay  in  his  liveliest  man- 


Voltaire.  163 

ner,  in  the  essay  on  Frederick  the  Great.  In  brief 
outline,  this  episode  in  Voltaire's  life  runs  thus : 

Frederick,  whose  whole  reading  was  in  French 
literature,  and  who  sincerely  admired  Voltaire  as 
its  greatest  glory,  however  extravagant  and  ful- 
some were  the  flatteries  which  he  addressed  to  the 
poet,  invited  him  at  this  time  to  his  court,  to  ac- 
cept the  office  of  Chamberlain,  the  cross  of  an 
Order,  and  a  pension  of  about  four  thousand  dollars 
for  life.  He  was  allowed  to  bring  with  him  his 
niece,  Madame  Denis.  In  the  correspondence  be- 
tween the  King  and  the  philosopher,  excessive  lau- 
dations were  lavished  on  both  sides.  "  He  treated 
me,"  said  Voltaire  afterwards,  "  as  a  divine  man  ;  I 
treated  him  as  a  Solomon."  The  invitation  was 
accepted,  and  in  1750  Voltaire  left  Paris  for  Berlin, 
not  to  return  until  thirty  years  had  been  passed  in 
exile. 

Arrived  at  Berlin,  he  was  welcomed  with  eager 
delight.  The  King  and  his  courtiers  played  at 
philosophy.  The  atheists  Frederick  had  gathered 
about  him  grew  jealous  of  the  more  brilliant  and 
satirical  deist.  Intrigues  and  quarrels  followed. 
The  King,  who  had  requested  Voltaire  to  criticise 
and  correct  his  own  royal  and  very  bad  verses,  was 
told  of  a  speech  of  the  malicious  wit's  about  Fred- 
erick's sending  him  his  dirty  linen  to  wash.  Vol- 
taire was  told  of  a  speech  of  the  King's  about  his 
only  caring  to  squeeze  the  orange  and  intending  to 
throw  it  away  when  he  had  swallowed  the  juice. 
Then  Voltaire  attacked  with  his  bitter  ridicule 
Maupertuis  the  philosopher,  whom  Frederick  had 
made  President  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Prussia. 
Frederick  wrote  in  the  President's  defence,  and,  by 
way  of  further  criticism,  ordered  Voltaire's  witty 
pamphlet,  La  Diatribe  (TAkdkia,  to  be  burned  by 
the  hands  of  the  common  hangman.  Voltaire's 
rage  was  soon  curbed  by  the  reflection  that  he  was 
in  the  power  of  a  despot.  He  dissembled  for  a  time, 
and  at  last  obtained  permission  to  leave  the  king- 


}64  French  Literature. 

<lom.  At  Frankfort  he  was  arrested  by  a  brutal 
emissary  of  the  King's,  on  the  pretence  that  he  had 
carried  oft'  Frederick's  poetry  with  him.  The  book 
had  inadvertently  been  brought  away  in  his  bag- 
gage. It  was  returned,  but  Voltaire  and  his  niece 
were  still  detained  for  a  time  and  treated  with 
great  indignity,  a  large  sum  of  money  being  ex- 
torted from  them  by  the  wretches  who  kept  them 
confined.  When  Voltaire  made  Europe  ring  with 
his  indignant  account  of  the  outrage,  Frederick  dis- 
owned responsibility  for  the  act ;  but  its  perpetra- 
tors were  never  punished.  A  sort  of  reconciliation 
was  patched  up  years  afterwards  between  the 
King  and  Voltaire,  and  their  correspondence  was 
renewed ;  but  there  was  never  again  cordiality  or 
confidence  between  them. 

Voltaire  now  took  up  his  residence  in  Switzer- 
land at  a  place  near  Geneva,  which  he  called  Les 
Delices.  Later,  he  purchased  Ferney  on  the  shores 
of  the  lovely  Lake  Leman  near  the  French  frontier, 
where  he  lived  through  the  closing  yea*"!  of  his 
life. 

From  this  place  of  refuge  he  poured  forth  a  mul- 
titude of  pamphlets,  tales,  poems,  and  histories, 
avowing  only  the  great  dramatic  and  historical 
works  and  some  of  the  poems ;  denying,  sometimes 
vehemently,  and  even  to  his  best  friends,  his  author- 
ship of  a  whole  literature  of  satires,  pasquinades, 
criticisms,  and  dissertations  political,  metaphysical, 
and  theological.  As  Macaulay  well  says:  "From 
the  time  when  his  sojourn  beneath  the  Alps  com- 
menced, the  dramatist,  the  wit,  the  historian,  was 
merged  in  a  more  important  character.  He  was 
now  the  patriarch,  the  founder  of  a  sect,  the  chief 
of  a  conspiracy,  the  prince  of  a  wide  intellectual 
commonwealth.  He  often  enjoyed  a  pleasure  dear 
to  the  better  part  of  his  nature,  the  pleasure  of  vin- 
dicating innocence  which  had  no  other  helper,  of 
punishing  tyranny  in  high  places.  He  had  also  the 
satisfaction,  not  less  acceptable  to  his  ravenous  van- 


Voltaire.  165 

ity,  of  hearing  terrified  Capuchins  call  him  the 
Antichrist." 

Here,  in  his  old  age,  at  war  with  all  the  world, 
his  most  generous  actions  were  performed.  The 
grand-niece  of  the  great  Corneille  was  in  want :  be 
provided  for  her,  had  her  carefully  educated  at  Fer- 
ney  under  his  own  eye,  and  issued  a  fine  edition  of 
Corneille's  works  purposely  to  raise  from  its  pro- 
ceeds a  sum  sufficient  for  her  support. 

Jean  Galas  of  Toulouse,  a  Protestant,  was  by  the 
fanatical  parlement  of  that  city  unjustly  and  inhu- 
manly to  be  broken  on  the  wheel  for  the  pretended 
murder  of  his  son  because  of  his  intention  to  abjure 
heresy.  The  awful  sentence  was  carried  out,  and 
the  property  of  Galas  was  confiscated.  The  young- 
est son  was  banished,  but,  captured  by  the  monks, 
was  forced  to  become  a  Catholic.  The  daughters 
were  sent  to  a  convent.  The  widow  Galas  escaped 
to  Switzerland, _and  aroused  the  interest  of  Voltaire, 
whose  indignation  found  vent  in  his  work  Sur  la 
Tolerance,  in  which  the  fanaticism  which  had  ruined 
this  poor  family  was  exposed  in  burning  words. 
The  affair  was  investigated,  and  the  innocence  of 
all  the  accused  was  fully  established.  Louis  XV. 
gave  the  sum  of  30,000  livres  to  the  survivors. 
But  neither  the  Parlement  of  Toulouse,  nor  the 
Dominican  monks  who  had  kindled  the  flame  of 
fanaticism,  were  punished. 

Similar  exertions  in  behalf  of  humanity  were  made 
by  Voltaire  in  the  case  of  the  cruel  punishment  in- 
flicted on  the  boy  La  Barre  for  blasphemy  by  the 
fanaticism  of  the  priests  at  Abbeville. 

Meanwhile  the  old  patriarch  of  letters  kept  up  a 
voluminous  correspondence  with  able  men  in  all 
ranks  of  life  and  in  every  part  of  Europe,  a  corre- 
spondence, the  political  dexterity  of  which,  in  addi- 
tion to  the  genius  pat  forth  in  his  other  writings, 
acknowledged  and  unacknowledged,  created  and 
maintained  for  him  an  influence  which  made  men 
count  him  as  one  of  the  great  powers  of  Europe. 


166  French  Literature. 

Amid  all  these  labors  and  triumphs,  the  old 
Frenchman's  heart  still  longed  for  a  sight  of  Paris. 
The  marriage  of  a  young  lady  who  was  under 
Madame  Denis's  charge  took  him  at  last  to  the 
scene  of  his  early  dramatic  successes.  His  tragedy 
of  Irtne  had  just  been  finished,  and  he  was  to  see  it 
played  before  an  audience  of  another  generation 
from  that  which  had  witnessed  the  performance  of 
Zaire  and  Merope. 

The  people  of  Paris  were  in  a  tumult  of  enthu- 
siasm at  the  sight  of  the  old  patriarch,  who  had  for 
two  generations  been  at  the  head  of  French  litera- 
ture and  had  for  a  score  of  years  past  been  keeping 
Europe  in  a  ferment  with  his  war  against  tyranny, 
injustice,  and  superstition.  They  followed  his  car- 
riage through  the  streets.  They  were  hours  stand- 
ing before  his  windows.  They  supported  his  feeble 
steps  when  he  came  down  the  stairway.  His  bust 
was  crowned  with  applause  at  the  theatre.  He  was 
surrounded  everywhere  with  marks  of  respect  and 
evidences  of  attachment.  Cries  of  joy,  bursts  of 
acclamation,  tears  of  enthusiastic  emotion,  greeted 
him  wherever  he  showed  himself.  But  what  moved 
him  most,  says  Condorcet,  was  a  simple  little  inci- 
dent that  recalled,  not  the  great  works  of  wit  and 
fancy  which  he  had  written,  but  one  brave  and  un- 
selfish service  to  outraged  humanity.  "  Who  is  it 
they  are  following  ?  "  asked  a  stranger,  who  chanced 
to  be  in  Paris  at  this  time,  of  an  old  woman  in  the 
streets — "  Who  is  the  old  man  the  people  are 
crowding  after?"  The  good  woman  knew  nothing 
of  him  as  the  author  of  Zaire  and  Candide.  She 
knew  but  one  title  that  he  had  to  the  people's  af- 
fection. "Do  you  not  know?"  said  she,  "It  is  the 
preserver  of  the  family  of  Galas." 

Others  valued  him  as  the  great  literary  master. 
But  all  welcomed  him  to  the  great  capital  with  such 
an  ovation  as  it  has  been  rarely  the  lot  of  a  writer 
to  receive  from  his  countrymen.  It  was  too  much 
for  the  delighted  old  man.  "They  wish, "said  he, 


Voltaire.  167 

with  sincerer  tears  than  he  had  ever  shed  before, "  to 
make  me  die  with  pleasure."  He  lost  his  sleep  from 
excitement  and  fatigue.  The  next  day  he  was  to  re- 
ceive the  eulogies  of  the  Academy.  To  gain 
strength  for  the  occasion,  he  took  a  dose  of  opium 
to  woo  back  the  needed  sleep.  The  dose  was  too 
large  for  the  old  man  of  eighty-four.  He  fell 
into  a  lethargy,  and  died,  after  writing  in  his  last 
days  some  words  of  praise  for  a  decree  of  the 
King's,  reversing  the  unjust  doom  by  which  the  elder 
Lally-Tollendal  had  perished.  The  son  had  pro- 
cured this  reversal,  in  great  measure  through  Vol- 
taire's earnest  representations  of  the  injustice  of 
the  sentence  against  the  old  general. 

Of  Voltaire's  works,  so  numerous  are  they,  it 
will  be  useless  to  attempt  to  name  any  but  the  more 
important  in  the  many  departments  of  literature 
which  he  essayed. 

His  chief  epic,  the  Hgnriade,  only  serves  to  show 
how  little  adapted  French  genius  is  for  epic  poetry. 
It  is  little  more  than  a  long  poetical  argument  for 
tolerance,  with  a  hero  whom  he  would  have  been 
glad  to  describe  as  of  no  religion  at  all,  though  he 
professes  two.  But  Voltaire's  contemporaries  read 
and  admired  those  ten  thousand  Alexadrines. 

His  other  epic,  the  Pucelle,  shameful  as  it  is  to 
France  and  to  Voltaire  that  any  Frenchman  should 
have  written  so  vile  and  false  a  calumny  of  the 
sublime  Maid  of  Orleans,  the  great  heroine  of 
France,  is  in  literary  excellence  a  far  finer  work,  the 
most  poetical,  indeed,  of  all  his  writings.  Lord 
Brougham  says  of  it: — "In  brilliant  imagery,  in 
picturesque  description,  in  point  and  epigram,  in 
boundless  fertility  of  fancy,  in  variety  of  striking 
and  vigorous  satire, — all  clothed  in  verse  as  natural 
as  Swift's,  and  far  more  varied  as  well  as  harmo- 
nious,— no  prejudice,  however  naturally  raised  by 
the  moral  faults  of  the  work,  can  prevent  us  from 
regarding  it  as  the  great  masterpiece  of  his  poetical 
genius."  What  ;i  pity  it  is  that,  like  Byron  in  the. 


168  French  Literature. 

case  of  his  Don  Juan,  he  should  have  put  his  high- 
est powers  into  a  work,  the  very  conception  of 
which  is  an  infamy,  and  in  composing  which  he 
seems  to  have  cast  all  the  restraints  of  decency  or 
even  common  good  feeling  to  the  winds ! 

His  chief  tragedies  were  CEdipe,  Zaire,  Alzire, 
Mahomet,  Merope,  Oreste,  Rome  sauvee,  Semiramis, 
the  Orphelin  de  la  Chine,  TancrMe,  and  Irtne. 
They  exhibit  great  genius,  but  lack  that  intense 
tone  of  reality  which  alone  makes  a  play  a  true 
mirror  of  human  life.  They  are  made  from  the 
brain,  not  from  the  soul.  Well-contrived  plots, 
well-conceived  characters,  occasionally  fine  stage- 
effects,  brilliant  declamation,  go  to  make  up  plays  that 
may  read  well  and  act  well.  But  something  more 
is  needed  for  really  great  plays.  In  Voltaire's,  as  in 
Sheridan's,  and,  to  some  extent,  in  those  of  Beau- 
marchais,  the  characters  all  talk  well,  many  of  them 
too  well  for  the  parts  they  are  to  fill.  All  speak 
the  same  terse,  epigrammatic  language.  It  was 
Moilere's  deliberate  avoidance  of  this,  which 
brought  upon  him  Boileau's  charge  that  he  some- 
times debased  the  language  by  introducing  provin- 
cialisms and  patois. 

But  Moliere  was  right  and  Boileau  wrong.  Vol- 
taire's more  serious  passages,  too,  are  mere  rhetoric; 
he  never  rises  to  the  eloquence  of  deep  emotion. 
The  peculiar  monotony  of  French  heroic  verse,  in- 
deed, makes  it  difficult  for  the  swell  of  feeling  to 
rise  into,  anything  higher  than  grandiose  declama- 
tion. Thomas  Moore,  the  delicacy  of  whose  ear 
for  the  music  of  verse  no  one  will  dispute,  notes  in  his 
diary  the  curiously  marked  sing-song  of  the  French 
tragic  metre:  "Mademoiselle  Duchesnois  in  Jean ne 
(K  Arc.  Attended  watchfully  to  her  recitative,  and 
find  that,  in  nine  lines  out  of  ten,  'A  cobbler  there 
was  and  he  lived  in  a  stall,'  is  the  tune  of  the 
French  heroics."  It  is  true  that  Corneille  and 
Racine  were  able  to  put  some  heart  into  even  this 
monotonous  verse. 


Voltaire.  169 

The  subject  of  Zaire  was  suggested  by  Othello. 
It  is  considered  the  finest  of  his  tragedies.  Oros- 
mane,  Nerestau,  Lusignan,  and  the  heroine  Zaire 
are  all  masterly  creations;  and  the  plot  is  very  hap- 
pily contrived.  Alzire  is  not  so  pathetic  as  Zaire, 
but  it  is  more  brilliant.  The  scene  of  the  play  is 
that  New  World,  so  inviting  to  fiction,  in  the  fresh- 
ness of  its  mingled  charm  as  the  sphere  in  which 
the  deeds  of  the  Spanish  Conquistadores  con- 
trast with  the  wildness  of  the  primeval  forest  and 
the  picturesqueness  of  the  natives.  Alvares, 
Zamore,  Gusman,  and,  above  all,  Alzire  are  ad- 
mirably conceived  characters ;  and  the  old  lesson 
of  tolerance  which  is  wrought  out  in  the  working 
of  the  play  is  fortunately  not  allowed  to  obtrude 
itself  to  the  detriment  of  its  dramatic  interest. 

Mahomet  lacks  the  elements  of  power  the  poet 
could  easily  have  given  it  in  full  accordance  with 
historic  truth,  had  he  not  been  dominated  by  his 
disbelief  in  the  sincerity  of  religious  faith.  He 
makes  the  grand  mistake  of  conceiving  the  Arabian 
prophet  as  an  impostor.  He  did  not  realize  the 
absurdity  of  making  a  Tartuffe  the  founder  of  a 
great  religion.  Mahomet,  Omar,  and  Seide  are  all 
so  tainted  with  fraud,  that  they  fail  to  infuse  into 
the  play  the  essence  of  dramatic  effect.  Geruzez 
well  observes,  that  the  Mahomet  painted  by  Vol- 
taire, far  from  conquering  and  converting  half  the 
world,  would  never  have  succeeded  in  making  a 
zealot  of  a  single  camel-driver.  Nothing  that  he 
has  written  shows  more  strikingly  the  fatal  defect 
in  his  genius.  "Genius,"  says  Bulwer-Lytton, 
"may  be  world- wide,  but  it  should  not  be  world- 
limited.  Voltaire  never  escapes  'this  visible  diur- 
nal sphere.'  With  all  his  imagination,  he  can  not 
comprehend  the  enthusiasm  which  lifts  itself  above 
the  earth." 

Aferope  was  taken  from  a  piece  of  the  Italian 
Scipione  Maffei,  while  some  of  its  dramatic  effects 
were  borrowed  from  the  Ama^is  of  La  Grange-Chan- 


170  French  Literature. 

eel.  It  is  the  best  of  Voltaire's  plays  on  Greek  legend- 
ary subjects.  Oreste,  which  he  took  from  Sopho- 
cles, was  spoiled  by  his  concentrating  the  interest 
on  Clytemnestra. 

His  comedies,  Nanine  and  the  Enfant  prodiyue, 
the  best  among  his  efforts  in  that  branch  of  the 
dramatic  art,  show  conclusively  that  he  had  no  gift 
in  that  direction.  He,  who  was  so  witty,  so  mali- 
ciously diverting  in  his  romances,  satires,  and 
pamphlets,  was  in  the  domain  of  dramatized  mirth 
a  failure.  His  genius  was  too  subjective  for 
comedy.  He  could  approach  Corneille  and  Racine, 
but  was  not  able  to  follow  Moliere  even  afar  off. 
His  critical  spirit,  however,  enabled  him  to  cope 
with  Boileau  and  Pope  in  didactic  poetry.  His 
Discours  sur  VHomme  is  a  work  of  great  merit.  It 
was  more  natural  to  him  to  address  the  understand- 
ing than  to  move  the  heart;  and  the  serious  reason- 
ing, with  which  he  sets  forth  the  doctrines  of  toler- 
ance and  humanity,  has  the  great  advantage  of  sin- 
cerity, and  is  couched  in  clear,  strong,  and  harmo- 
nious verse.  No  didactic  poetry,  indeed,  is  finer. 

His  historical  works,  besides  the  Essai  sur  les 
moeurs  et  T  esprit  des  nations,  to  which  I  have  al- 
ready alluded,  were  the  Histoire  de  Charles  XII.,  a 
model  of  graceful  narrative,  and  the  Siecle  de  Louis 
XIV.,  which  would  have  been  much  more  valuable, 
had  he  not  unhappily  written  it  on  a  bad  plan,  de- 
stroying its  unity  by  dividing  it  into  separate  sub- 
jects. 

Among  the  romances,  the  best  are  Zadiy,  the 
Ingenu,  and  Candide.  The  last  is  particularly 
charming.  Dr.  Johnson,  who  had  a  special  horror 
of  Voltaire,  held  it  in  the  greatest  admiration. 
Nothing  can  be  more  easy,  light,  and  graceful  tban 
the  wit  and  humor  of  this  tale. 

In  his  letters  and  his  Memoires,  the  richness  of 
his  fancy,  the  keenness  of  his  Vision,  the  neatness 
of  his  phrase,  the  trenchant  force  and  swiftness  of 
his  wit,  the  soundness  of  his  common-sense,  the 


Voltaire.  171 

grace  of  his  kindlier  mood,  the  point  in  which  he 
condensed  his  thought,  give  him  an  eminence  be- 
low only  the  very  highest  in  those  departments  of 
literature.  Indeed,  when  we  see  how  nearly  he 
touches  the  supreme  of  excellence  in  tragedy,  satire, 
didactic  verse,  history,  tales,  romances,  letters, 
memoirs,  controversial  pamphlets,  scientific  essays, 
anything  and  everything  except  comedy,  we  can- 
not fail  to  be  amazed  at  the  fertility  and  versatility 
of  his  genius,  and  the  wide  sweep  and  sparkle  of 
his  powers.  If  he  lacked  depth,  he  had  everything 
else. 


172  French  Literature. 


XIII. 

ROUSSEAU,  THE  STAGE,  AND  THE  ENCYCLOPEDISTS. 

YOLTAIRE  was  the  strongest  representative  of 
the  skeptical  and  scoffing  spirit  of  his  age.  Rous- 
seau was  the  representative  of  the  protest  of  the 
human  heart  against  this  endless  negation.  In 
him  this  protest  took  the  form  of  sentimentalism, 
warmed  into  intense  fervor  by  an  imagination 
thrilled  through  with  sensuous  passion.  His  pro- 
test was  not  directed  consciously  against  the  de- 
structive philosophy  of  the  age,  for,  while  these 
philosophers  tried  to  disprove  the  laws  on  which 
the  accepted  conventions  of  society  rested,  Rous- 
seau scorned  the  conventions  themselves,  strove  to 
overbear  them  with  the  enthusiasm  of  his  senti- 
mental creed,  and  struck  at  the  foundations  of  all 
society  with  such  wild  logic  as  he  had  at  his  com- 
mand. His  was,  then,  no  formal  opposition  to  the 
thought  of  Voltaire  and  the  Encyclopedists,  but  the 
vague  yet  powerful  cry  of  the  oppressed,  which  be- 
came later  a  furious  cry  that  found  its  logical  out- 
come in  the  rude  force  of  revolt,  and  has  in  our 
day  reached  its  climax  in  the  lawlessness  of  com- 
munism. 

His  influence  as  a  social  force  has  been  more  in- 
tense than  that  of  Voltaire;  but  the  thought  of 
Voltaire,  commending  itself  as  it  does  to  the 
worldly-minded  in  civilized  communities,  has  been 
and,  most  likely,  will  continue  to  be  the  dominant 
influence,  until  the  world  is  really  Christianized. 
Botli  have  exerted  an  influence  that  can  be  traced 
.in  the  whole  body  of  European  literature  since  their 
time.  Both  have  been  more  powerful  as  destroyers 


Rousseau,  the  Stage,  and  the  Encyclopedists.   173 

than  as  builders.  The  one  has  been  the  subtle, 
vivid,  keenly  flashing,  blinding,  and  blasting 
lightning,  playing  in  graceful  wantonness  among 
the  clouds,  and  striking  ever  and  anon  where  none 
could  foretell  the  fall  of  the  thunderbolt.  The 
other  has  been  the  furious  rainstorm  of  the  tropics, 
that  submerges  all  that  lies  within  its  scope,  yet 
with  a  lurid  beauty  and  a  dreadful  grandeur  in  the 
mighty  surge  of  its  forest-filling  waters. 

This  great  genius,  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau,  infi- 
nitely little  in  his  private  character,  his  self-con- 
fessed meannesses,  his  selfish  vices,  and  the  childish 
suspiciousness  of  his  nature,  but  certainly  great  as 
a  writer,  was  born  at  Geneva  in  1712  (died  1778). 
His  family  was  of  French  origin.  His  father  was 
a  watchmaker.  The  motherless  boy  was  brought 
up  by  an  aunt,  schooled  by  a  Protestant  pastor, 
put  to  studying  law  with  a  gentleman  who  decided 
that  he  was  unfit  for  that  profession,  and  finally 
apprenticed  to  an  engraver  who  treated  him  harshly 
and  from  whom  he  ran  away.  Pitied  by  Madame 
de  Warens,  a  lady  of  Savoy,  he  was  placed  by  her 
at  a  charity  school  in  Turin.  Running  away  from 
this  place  also,  he  lived  for  a  time  with  the  wife  of 
a  soldier,  and  was  kicked  out  of  doors  by  the 
returning  husband.  Becoming  a  lackey  in  the 
house  of  the  Countess  of  Yercelli,  and  stealing  a 
silk  ribbon,  he  accused  a  maid  of  the  theft,  and 
was  dismissed  with  her.  Returning,  after  a  course 
of  wandering,  to  Madame  de  Warens,  he  was 
received  by  her — according  to  his  account — as  her 
lover,  though  to  keep  up  appearances  he  called 
her  i;  Mamma."  Going  with  her  to  live  at  Char- 
mettes,  he  grew  melancholy  and  had  to  seek  medi- 
cal treatment  at  Montpellier.  On  his  way,  he  fell 
in  love  with  a  young  lady.  Finding,  on  coming 
back  to  Madame  de  Warens,  that  she  had  taken 
another  lover,  he  went  to  Lyon  and  became  tutor 
in  a  private  family  there.  Believing  himself  an 
inventor  in  musical  science,  fee  went  on  from  Lyon 


174  French  Literature. 

to  Paris  to  read  a  paper  before  the  Academic  des 
Sciences,  which  body  received  his  project  very 
coldly.  Becoming  secretary  to  the  French  ambas- 
sador at  Venice,  he  went  with  that  official  to  Italy. 
On  his  return  to  Paris,  having  made  acquaintance 
with  men  like  Diderot,  D'Holbach  and  Grimm,  one 
of  that  circle,  Madame  D'Epinay,  placed  him  in 
a  delightful  suburban  residence  called  the  Hermit- 
age, where  he  lived  for  years  with  a  girl  of  the 
people,  Therese  le  Yasseur.  Their  children' — five 
in  number — Rousseau  the  sentimentalist  sent  to  the 
Foundling  Hospital,  though  he  finally  married  the 
mother. 

The  philosophical  coterie,  which  had  tried  to 
make  a  pet  of  him,  at  last  tired  of  him  and  threw 
him  oft'  unceremoniously.  Cast  adrift  again,  he 
was  for  a  time  protected  by  the  Duke  and  Duchess 
of  Luxembourg,  but  in  the  end  went  back  to 
Switzerland.  Invited  by  David  Hume,  the  Scot- 
tish freethinker,  to  visit  him,  he  went  over  to  Eng- 
land in  1766.  The  two  philosophers  failed  to 
agree,  however ;  and,  coming  back  to  France, 
Rousseau  was  given  shelter  by  the  Prince  de  Conti 
in  the  castle  of  Trye.  But  he  soon  had  to  leave 
this  asylum.  The  last  eight  years  of  his  life  were 
spent  in  great  obscurity  in  Paris.  In  the  early 
part  of  the  year  in  which  he  died,  De  Girardin  gave 
him  shelter  from  his  persecutors,  imaginary  or  real, 
at  his  estate  of  Ermenonville,  near  Paris,  and  in 
this  retreat  the  poor  creature  died. 

In  his  Confessions  we  see  him  revealing  as  great 
a  moral  obliquity  in  his  character  as  Benvenuto 
Cellini  does  in  his,  only  in  totally  opposite  direc- 
tions. Cellini's  strange  blindness  of  the  moral 
sense  is  only  an  exaggeration  of  what  was  common 
to  Italians  in  his  age.  But  in  Rousseau's  case,  the 
type  is  peculiar;  and,  were  it  not  for  the  man's 
genius,  few  would  hesitate  in  pronouncing  his 
moral  disease  insanity. 

Mean  and  low  as  was  so  large  a  part  of  his  life, 


Rousseau,  the  Stage,  and  the  Encyclopedists.    175 

shameful  as  were  some  of  its  incidents,  valueless  as 
were  his  social  speculations,  there  was  a  moral 
force  in  his  vindication  of  the  claims  of  the  mean- 
est human  soul,  his  arraignment  of  civilization  with 
its  luxuries  and  corruptions,  and  his  sincere  praise 
of  nature  and  her  august  simplicities.  There  was, 
too,  a  splendid  power  in  his  eloquent  prose  and  in 
the  tender  accents  in  which  he  portrayed  an  impas- 
sioned and  voluptuous  love. 

It  is  this  strength  and  skill  of  literary  art,  com- 
bined with  his  air  of  speaking  in  the  name  of 
virtue,  that  has  made  his  writings  so  seductive  to 
the  young.  He  moves  them  to  sympathy  by  his 
eloquence,  and  then  his  promise  of  a  new  world 
built  on  the  ruins  of  our  corrupt  civilization  appeals 
to  that  sanguine  spirit  which  is  the  spring  from 
which  youthful  ardor  so  easily  and  eagerly  leaps 
upward.  Taking  his  stand  on  that  State  of  Nature, 
which  existed  solely  in  his  imagination,  he  put 
forth  the  lying  oracle  that  "all  men  are  equal,"  to 
which  the  world  still  owes  some  of  its  most  dan- 
gerous social  tendencies. 

He  was  nearly  forty  years  of  age,  when  he  first 
found  where  his  power  lay.  A  thesis  announced 
by  the  academy  of  Dijon:  "Has  the  Progress  of 
the  Sciences  and  the  Arts  contributed  to  corrupt 
or  to  purify  Morals  ? "  called  forth  his  first  real 
literary  effort.  This  was  his  Discours  sur  les  lettres. 
After  this  carne  his  discourse  Sur  Torigine  et 
les  fondements  de  Vinegalite  parmi  les  hommes.  In 
this  prelude  to  the  Contrat  Social,  he  pleads  against 
the  rights  of  property.  These  theses  were  followed 
by  his  impassioned  romance,  La  Nouvelle  Helo'ise  ; 
his  sophistical  Utopia,  fimile,  ou  de  V Education ; 
his  Contrat  Social,  a  treatise  on  government, 
packed  with  crazy  political  and  social  theories 
which  made  it  the  Bible  of  the  Terrorists  of  1793; 
his  Confessions — singular  work  of  a  half-madman, 
amazing  one  by  its  shameless  avowals  of  infamy 
and  its  measureless  vanity  ;  and  the  Reveries,  won- 


176  French  Literature. 

# 

erfully  fresli  and  vivid  recitals  of  his  impressions 
after  long  walks  in  the  outskirts  of  Paris.  To  these 
works  must  be  added  the  Lettre  d  d1  Alembert  sur 
les  Spectacles,  written  against  the  theatre  and 
dramatic  authors  ;  and  the  Lettres  de  Montagne  and 
Lettre  a  VArcheveque  de  Paris,  polemical  tracts ;  Le 
Devin  de  Village,  an  opera  in  which  both  words  and 
music  are  his  ;  the  Dictionnaire  de  Musique ;  and, 
lastly,  his  Correspondance. 

A  curious  proof  that  there  was  something  sound 
and  pure  at  the  bottom  of  Rousseau's  wild  rhap- 
sodies, is  the  fact,  that,  while  Voltaire's  scoffing 
spirit  has  infested  much  of  the  literature  since  his 
day  without  bringing  with  it  Voltaire's  earnest 
battle  for  tolerance  and  gallant  defence  of  the  op- 
pressed, Rousseau's  love  for  nature  and  faith  in  the 
soul's  immortality  inspired  in  turn  Bernardin  de 
Saint-Pierre  and  De  Chateaubriand  to  a  purer  and 
higher  tone  than  Rousseau  himself  reached,  though 
his  genius  was  far  greater  than  that  of  either  of  these 
followers  of  his. 

But  Rousseau  whom  I  have  assigned  to  this 
place  in  my  sketch  because  his  genius  and  its  influ- 
ence entitle  him  to  be  named  directly  after  Vol- 
taire, did  not  begin  to  write  his  most  characteristic 
works  until  Buffon  had  already  become  famous, 
and  the  Encyclopedists  were  enjoying  the  full 
measure  of  their  renown. 

We  must  turn  back,  therefore,  a  few  years  to 
sketch  their  place  in  literature,  and  also  to  mention 
briefly  some  of  those  minor  writers  who  were 
thought  worthy  of  Voltaire's  satire. 

.Lefranc  de  Pompignan  (1709-1784),  the  friend 
of  the  lyrist  J.  B.  Rousseau,  shared  with  him  Vol- 
taire's ridicule.  Yet  he  was  by  no  means  despic- 
able as  a  writer,  whether  of  prose  or  of  verse  ;  and 
he  was,  besides,  a  man  of  worth  in  his  private 
character.  His  sacred  songs  have  some  merit ;  his 
ode  on  the  death  of  J.  B.  Rousseau  extorted  admi- 
ration even  from  Voltaire ;  and  his  tragedv  of 


Rousseau,  the  Staye,  and  the  Encyclopedists.   177 

Didon  is  a  work  of  some  merit.  He  was  a  man 
of  more  than  ordinary  acquirements,  too,  adding  to 
his  classical  learning  some  knowledge  of  English 
and  Italian  literature. 

Another  of  those  assailed  by  Voltaire  was  Gres- 
set  (1709-1777),  a  poet  who  fairly  rivaled  the 
great  literary  man  of  the  age  in  the  lighter  forms 
of  verse.  It  was  of  him  that  Voltaire  said,  on 
his  quitting  the  Society  of  Jesus,  "A  poet  the  more 
and  a  Jesuit  the  less  is  a  great  blessing  to  the 
world."  Bui  Voltaire  took  to  heart  Gresset's  pub- 
lished letter  against  Comedy,  declaring  maliciously 
that  Gresset  had  not  sinned  very  grievously  in 
that  way.  Yet  Gresset's  single  comedy,  Le  Me- 
diant, is  good  enough  to  receive  warm  praise  from 
Villemain. 

Piron  also  (1689-1773)  was  an  object  of  Vol- 
taire's attack,  but  he  can  hardly  be  said  to  have 
come  oif  the  worse  in  the  war  of  epigrams.  His 
single  comedy,  La>*  Metrornanie,  is  full  of  wit  and 
fire.  Both  he  and  Gresset  wrote  tragedies  also, 
but  these  were  soon  forgotten.  Gresset's  little 
poem  of  Vertvert  is  a  graceful  and  sportive  effusion. 
Some  of  his  other  pieces,  La  Chartreuse,  Le  Careme 
Impromptu,  Le  Lutrin  Vivant,  and  Les  Ombres,  are 
lively  and  elegant  poems,  in  which  the  verse  flows 
with  great  ease  and  naturalness. 

Gilbert  the  satirist  (1751-1780),  who  died  at 
twenty-nine,  cannot  be  numbered  among  those 
whom  Voltaire  assailed.  He  was  an  adversary  to 
whom,  for  some  reason,  the  bitter  controversialist 
made  no  reply.  Short  as  was  Gilbert's  career,  his 
satire  was  strong  enough  to  take  a  place  in  litera- 
ture. 

But  Voltaire  did  not  show  the  same  forbearance 
toward  Freron  the  critic  (1719-1776),  who  in  his 
journal  made  weekly  assaults  on  the  philosophy 
of  the  day,  and  especially  on  Voltaire.  The  epi- 
grams of  the  wits  are  said  to  have  killed  poor 
Freron,  but  this  may  be  as  apocryphal  as  the  old 


178  French  Literature. 

story  of  the  death  of  Keats  having  been  hastened 
by  hostile  criticism. 

'  To  the  Abbe  Guenee  (1717-1803),  who  wrote 
the  Le.ttres  de  quelques  Juifs,  and  to  the  writer  of 
comedy,  Marivaux  (1688-1763),  Voltaire  showed  a 
more  forgiving  spirit,  looking  upon  them  as  men 
of  merit,  whom  he  would  be  sorry  to  regard  as  en- 
emies. 

Pierre  Carlet  de  Chamblain  de  Marivaux  was 
the  author  of  many  comedies,  the  style  of  which 
sinned  by  excess  of  fine  points  and  straining  after 
wit.  This  mannerism  gave  the  language  a  new 
word,  marivaudage.  The  best  of  his  comedies 
were  Les  Fausses  Confidences  and  Le  jeu  de  T Amour 
et  du  Hasard.  He  is  not  deficient  in  depicting 
character,  but  his  dialogue  lacks  naturalness  and 
is  too  brilliant  for  truth  to  nature.  In  romance  he 
succeeded  better,  his  Mariane  taking  high  rank 
among  French  works  of  fiction.  He  also  wrote  a 
romance  called  Le  Paysan  Parvenu.. 

Besides  these  writers,  who  were  associated  with 
Voltaire's  career,  either  as  mercilessly  satirized  by 
him,  or  as  his  assailants  whom  he  saw  fit  to  spare, 
there  were  others,  younger  men,  whom  he  gener- 
ously aided  and  drew  to  his  side  as  friends.  Among 
these  were  Marmontel  and  La  Harpe. 

Jean  Frangois  Marmontel  (1728-1799),  after 
making  himself  some  reputation  as  a  poet  in 
Toulouse,  went  to  Paris  on  Voltaire's  invitation  in 
1746.  He  had  no  great  success,  however,  with  his 
tragedies  and  operas,  but  through  Madame  de  Pom- 
padour's influence  got  a  secretaryship  at  Versailles, 
and,  later,  was  put  in  charge  of  the  Mercure.  In  this 
paper  he  began  to  publish  his  Gontes  Moraux,  which 
have  had  great  popularity,  and  have  been  translated 
into  many  languages.  lie  wrote  also  a  political  ro- 
mance called  Belisaire,  which  contained  a  chapter 
on  toleration  that  raised  the  ire  of  the  doctors  of  the 
Sorbonne.  Belisaire  was  condemned  as  heretical 
and  blasphemous.  The  tempest  it  raised  gave  rise 


Rousseau,  the  Stage,  and  the  Encyclopedists.  179 

to  a  whole  literature  of  pamphlets,  epigrams,  and 
caricatures.  Out  of  this  tumult  Marmontel  emerged 
as  historiographer  of  France,  the  wits  winning  the 
day  at  court  against  the  clerical  party.  He  was  a 
contributor  to  the  famous  Encyclopedic,  being  as- 
signed the  departments  of  poetry  and  general  litera- 
ture. This  contribution  he  also  published  separa- 
tely, under  the  title,  Elements  de  Litlerature.  This 
is  a  body  of  judicious  and  able  criticism.  Another 
work  of  his,  which  Geruzez  classes  with  the  Beli- 
saire,  calling  them  both  "  poems  in  prose,"  is  Les 
Incas.  His  Memoir -es  are  said  to  be  very  entertain- 
ing 

Jean  Fran9ois  de  La  Harpe  (1739-1803)  was 
called  the  French  Quintilian.  He  was  an  excellent 
critic,  and  is  now  chiefly  remembered  by  his  Lycee, 
on  Cours  de  Litterature  Ancienne  et  Moderne.  His 
first  essays  in  literature  were  satirical  verses,  which 
got  him  into  trouble  with  the  government.  He 
next  tried  dramatic  writing,  producing  Warwick, 
Philocttte,  and  Melanie,  which  had  better  success 
than  Marmontel's  tragedies.  But  his  success  in 
these  efforts  was  not  so  great  as  to  satisfy  him,  and 
he  abandoned  the  drama.  He  visited  Voltaire  at 
Ferney  in  1766,  and  was  his  guest  for  two  years. 
On  his  return  to  France,  he  devoted  himself  to 
criticism,  becoming  a  regular  contributor  to  the 
Mercure. 

Both  Marmontel  and  La  Harpe  lavished  eulogies 
on  Voltaire.  La  Harpe  was,  in  the  closing  years 
of  his  life,  a  participant  in  the  thrilling  scenes  of 
the  Revolution,  and  was  at  first  a  strong  republican ; 
but,  suffering  imprisonment  under  the  Directory, 
his  views  underwent  some  change. 

Saint-Lambert  (1717-1803)  was  still  more  ex- 
travagant in  his  praise  of  Voltaire.  He  set  him 
above  Corneille  and  Racine.  This  overstrained 
homage  occurs  in  a  poem  called  Les  Saisons,  a  work 
of  no  great  merit.  His  prose  is  still  heavier.  The 


180  French  Literature. 

Catechisme  universel  is  a  work  in  which  the  hard, 
materialistic  philosophy  of  the  age  is  formulated. 

Les  Saisons  was  the  first  swallow  of  a  great  flock 
of  descriptive  poems,  Delille's  Les  Jardins, 
Lemierre's  Les  Pastes,  Bosset's  L1  Agriculture,  and 
Boucher's  Les  Mois.  Delille  had  already  won  some 
reputation  by  his  fine  translation  of  Virgil's  Georgics. 

Lebrun  (1729-1807)  wrote  odes  inferior  only  to 
those  of  J.  B.  Bousseau,  while  he  perhaps  excelled 
him  in  his  epigrams.  He  also  paid  homage  to 
Voltaire. 

De  Belloy  (1727-1775),  a  tragic  writer  of  no  great 
power,  macle  a  great  success  in  his  Siege  de  Calais 
by  his  fortunate  choice  of  a  subject  which  possessed 
national  interest. 

Lemierre  (1723-1793),  besides  that  descriptive 
poem  of  which  mention  has  already  been  made, 
produced  tragedies  that  deserved  their  success. 

Guismond  de  La  Touche  (1725-1760),  in  his 
Iphigenie  en  Tauride;  Saurin  (17Q6-1781),  in  his 
Spartacus;  La  Noue  (1701-1761),  in  his  Mahomet 
II.  and  his  much-applauded  comedy  of  La  Coquette 
corrigee  ;  and  Ducis,  in  his  transfers  to  the  French 
stage  of  Shakspeare's  Hamlet,  Borneo  and  Juliet, 
King  Lear,  Macbeth,  and  Othello,  all  deserve  brief 
mention.  They  were  all  admirers  of  Voltaire  and 
received  his  gracious  approval,  although  he  ex- 
pressed some  regret,  in  view  of  the  irregularity  of 
Ducis's  plots,  at  having  made  Shakspeare  known  to 
his  countrymen. 

But  the  great  effort  of  that  age  of  free-thinkers, 
in  the  way  systematizing  their  philosophy,  was  the 
Encyclopedic.  Voltaire,  who  did  not  wholly  sym- 
pathize with  its  founders,  declared  that  it  was  built 
half  of  marble  and  half  of  mud.  It  was,  indeed,  a 
sort  of  Tower  of  Babel.  Its  authors  were  of  vari- 
ous shades  of  revolutionary  opinion  and  held  differ- 
ent degrees  of  skeptical  doctrine.  Their  theories 
were  not  harmonious.  Besides  the  troubles  caused 
by  their  own  divisions  and  discrepant  views,  their 


Rousseau,  the  Stage,  and  the  Encyclopedists.   181 

essays  as  fast  as  published  were  vehemently  assailed 
from  without.  Still,  the  work  was  finally  published, 
in  twenty-eight  volumes,  with  a  supplement,  later 
on,  in  five  volumes,  and,  finally,  an  analytical  index 
in  two  volumes.  Biography  and  History  were 
deliberately  excluded.  The  topics  which  found 
admission  were  discussed  with  greater  originality 
than  any  compilation  of  the  sort  had  yet  shown, 
and  the  articles  were  prepared  with  great  ability. 
It  was  received  with  immense  enthusiasm. 
D'Alembert  traced  the  plan,  and  Diderot  in  the 
main  charged  himself  with  the  task  of  editing. 
The  chief  writers  in  it  were,  besides  the  editors, 
Grimm,  Rousseau,  Voltaire,  Dumarsais,  D'llolbach, 
and  Jaucourt.  D'Alembert's  preface  was  consid- 
ered a  master-piece. 

Jean-le-Rond  d'Alembert  (1717-1783)  was  one 
of  the  most  distinguished  mathematicians  of  his 
time.  He  was  the  illegitimate  son  of  Madame  de 
Tencin  and  a  M.^Destouches.  Exposed  by  his  un- 
natural mother  on  the  steps  of  the  Church  of  St. 
Jean-le-Rond,  and  put  by  the  guard  who  found  him 
there  in  the  hands  of  a  poor  glazier's  wife,  he  was 
brought  up  by  her,  the  father  secretly  allowing  him 
a  sum  of  1200  francs  a  year.  He  lived  for  nearly 
forty  years  with  his  good  foster-mother,  pursuing 
his  favorite  studies  in  that  humble  home,  and  shar- 
ing with  her  his  slender  income.  She,  though 
loving  him  well,  used  to  expostulate  with  him  on 
the  subject  of  his  studies,  saying  :  "  You  will  never 
be  anything  but  a  philosopher ;  and  what  is  a  phil- 
osopher but  a  fool,  who  torments  himself  while 
alive,  that  folk  may  talk  about  him  after  he  is 
dead !  "  He  did  make  an  effort  to  seek  a  profitable 
career  for  his  abilities,  trying  first  law  and  then 
medicine ;  but  his  passion  for  science  was  too  strong. 
His  treatises  on  scientific  subjects,  however,  soon 
won  him  reputation.  He  was  through  life  singu- 
larly indifferent  to  riches  and  distinctions.  Fred- 
erick of  Prussia  offered  him  the  presidency  of  his 


182  French  Literature. 

Academy,  but  he  declined  the  honor.  Catherine 
II.  of  Russia  invited  him  to  take  charge  of  her 
son's  education,  at  100,000  francs  a  year ;  but  he 
declined  this  also.  He  never  married,  though  he 
was  for  many  years  greatly  attached  to  Mademoi- 
selle Espinasse,  whose  death  was  thought  to  have 
hastened  his.  He  was  a  man  of  great  benevolence  ; 
and,  though  his  views  on  the  subject  of  Christian- 
ity are  well  known  from  his  private  correspondence 
with  Yoltaire  and  Frederick  the  Great,  he  re- 
frained from  attacking  religion  in  his  published 
writings. 

It  was  not  so  with  Diderot.  Sincere,  eloquent, 
and  outspoken,  a  fatalist,  an  eager  talker,  and  an 
unwearied  worker,  he  proclaimed  his  infidelity  with 
the  zeal  of  an  apostle. 

Denis  Diderot  (1713-1784),  like  D'Alembert, 
practised  that  practical  charity  which  the  Gospel  he 
disbelieved  so  strongly  enjoins,  and  which  Chris- 
tianity introduced  into  the  spirit  of  society.  Being 
in  his  early  life  reduced  to  want,  he  made  a  vow 
never  to  disregard  the  prayers  of  the  needy.  This 
resolution  he  faithfully  kept.  When  in  compara- 
tive wealth,  he  was  thronged  by  applicants  for 
help  in  various  ways,  and  he  is  said  to  have  been 
always  ready  to  furnish  the  aid  sought  for.  He 
married  while  still  very  poor,  and  this  forced  him 
to  great  exertions.  A  translation  of  the  History 
of  Greece  from  an  English  work  brought  him  a 
hundred  crowns.  Finding  himself  successful  in 
literary  work,  he  now  wrote  his  Essai  sur  le  Merite 
et  la  Vertu,  the  Pensees  Philosopliiques,  the  Inter- 
pretation de  la  Nature,  and  the  Lettre  sur  les 
Aveugles.  This  last  work  sent  him  to  the  prison  of 
Vincennes  for  three  months.  He  wrote  also  for  the 
stage,  but  was  unsuccessful  in  his  dramatic  attempts. 
His  best  work  was  what  he  did  for  the  Encyclo- 
pedie.  Finding  himself  obliged,  in  his  later  years, 
to  sell  his  library,  to  provide  for  his  only  daughter, 
he  was  urged  by  the  impress  Catherine  to  come  to 


Rousseau,  the  Stage,  and  the  Encyclopedists.    183 

Russia  arid  be  librarian,  at  a  salary  of  one  thousand 
francs,  she  purchasing  his  library  on  condition  that 
lie  would  accompany  it.  He  went  to  St.  Peters- 
burg— though  merely  to  thank  the  Empress,  while 
declining  to  assume  the  offered  post,  and  died  on 
his  return  the  next  year. 

Among  his  romances,  the  most  powerful  are 
Jaques  le  Fataliste,  and  Le  Neveu  de  Rameau.  His 
writings  are  full  of  fire  and  passion,  but  have  the 
negligent  style  of  an  improviser.  Indeed,  he  af- 
fected conversational  carelessness  in  writing,  under 
the  conviction  that  naturalness  was  a  virtue  always 
to  be  aimed  at ;  and  it  was  this  labored  abruptness 
and  disconnectedness  in  the  dialogue  which  chiefly 
spoiled  his  plays,  Le  Pere  de  famille  and  Le  Fils 
naturel. 

Friedrich  Melchior,  Baron  Grimm,(1723-1807)  was 
born  at  Regensburg,  (Ratisbon)  on  the  Danube.  Ac- 
companying the  yourg  Count  of  Schonberg  to  the 
University  at  Leipsic,  and  afterwards  to  Paris,  he 
became  a  permanent  resident. in  the  French  capital, 
Rousseau  introducing  him  to  Diderot  and  other 
eminent  literary  persons,  and  thus  opening  up  to 
him  a  brilliant  future.  Diderot  and  D'Alernbert 
employed  his  pen  in  their  Encyclopedic.  Becoming 
secretary  to  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  he  acquired  much 
reputation  in  Germany  by  the  literary  bulletins 
which  he  sent  periodically  to  some  of  the  petty 
princes  of  the  empire.  But  Diderot  and  the  Abb6 
Raynal  supplied  him  with  much  of  the  material 
used  in  these  critical  letters.  He  received  his  title 
of  Baron  from  the  Duke  of  Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. 
When  the  Revolution  came,  he  took  refuge  in  Goth  a. 
Besides  what  he  supplied  to  the  Encyclopedic,  his 
literary  remains  are  Correspondance  Litteraire,  Philo- 
sophique  et  CV ///</>/'.  with  a  suplement  entitled  Cor- 
respondance inedite  de  Grimm  et  Diderot. 

Paul  Heinrich  Dietrich,  Baron  von  Holbach 
(1723-1789)  was  born  at  Heidelsheim,  in  the  Palat- 
inate. He  took  up  his  residence  in  Paris  early  in 


18-i  French  Literature. 

life.  He  was  a  pleasant  social  companion,  and, 
having  inherited  wealth,  was  able  to  entertain  in 
fine  style.  His  guests  were  the  most  eminent 
literary  men  of  his  time, — Diderot,  Helvetius, 
Raynal,  Rousseau.  Buftbn,  and  the  like.  He  was 
one  of  the  extreme  antagonists  of  religion.  His 
chief  work  was  the  Sys&me  de  la  Nature,  in  which  he 
sought  to  deduce  a  moral  scheme  from  natural 
principles.  The  book  advocated  materialism  and 
atheism  in  their  crudest  forms.  That  he  was  kind- 
hearted  and  unselfish  must  be  granted  even  by  those 
who  are  most  shocked  at  his  doctrines.  The 
Jesuits  were  especially  obnoxious  to  him;  yet, 
when  they  fell  into  disgrace,  he  made  his  house  a 
refuge  for  several  of  them. 

Claude-Adrien  Helvetius  (1715-1771),  sprung 
from  a  family  of  Swiss  origin,  was  born  at  Paris. 
After  leading  the  gay  and  profligate  life  of  a 
courtier  for  some  two  years,  he  grew  disgusted  with 
its  frivolity,  married  the  charming  daughter  of  the 
Cornte  de  Ligneville,  and  retired  to  a  little  estate  at 
Yore",  where  he  spent  his  time  in  bringing  up  his 
children,  caring  for  the  welfare  of  the  peasantry, 
and  writing  his  philosophical  books.  His  De 
VEsprit  was  devoted  to  his  favorite  theory,  that 
sensibility  is  the  source  of  all  the  higher  operations 
of  the  mind,  and  that  matter  alone  exists.  The 
Sorbonne  and  the  Parliament  of  Paris  condemned 
the  book.  Helvetius  also  left  a  posthumous  \vork, 
De  VHomme,  d?.  ses  Facultes,  et  de  son  Education. 

Guillaume  Thomas  Francois  Raynal  (1711-1796) 
.was  an  abbe,  whose  sympathy  with  the  skeptical 
thought  of  the  age  soon  drove  him  from  the  Church 
into  literature.  He  became  one  of  the  editors  of 
the  ftfercure.  In  conjunction  with  Diderot,  he 
wrote  the  Histoire  Philosophique  et  Politique  des 
fitablissements  et  du  Commerce  des  Europeens  dans 
les  deex  Indes,  a  work  which  from  its  strictures  on 
superstition  excited  the  ire  of  the  clerical  party, 
who  procured  its  condemnation  by  the  Parlement. 


Rousseau,  the  Stage,  and  the  Encyclopedists,   185 

To  the  student  of  English,  literature  this  book  is 
perhaps  known  only  from  the  extraordinary  rhap- 
sody into  which  Raynal  bursts,  when  treating  of  the 
birthplace  of  that  Mrs.  Draper,  whom  Sterne  affected 
to  adore  under  the  name  of  his  "  Brahmine."  It 
begins:  "Territory  of  Anjinga,  you  are  nothing; 
but  you  have  given  birth  to  Eliza.  One  day  these 
commercial  settlements  founded  by  Europeans  on 
the  coast  of  Asia  will  exist  no  more.  The  grass 
will  cover  them,  or  the  avenged  Indian  will  have 
built  over  their  ruins ;  but  if  my  writings  have  any 
duration,  the  name  of  Anjinga  will  remain  in  the 
memory  of  men."  There  are  three  more  pages  of 
this  absurd  rubbish. 

Among  these  sentimental  skeptics  were  Ma- 
dame Du  Deffand  and  Madame  D'fipinay. 

Marie  de  Vichy  Chamroud,  Marquise  du  Def- 
fand (1697-1780),  was  born  of  a  noble  family  of 
Burgundy.  She  eflrly  gave  evidence  of  the  bold- 
ness of  judgment  which  won  her  so  many  admirers 
in  her  mature  years.  Massillon  was  deputed  by 
her  parents  to  win  her  to  acquiescence  in  their 
creed.  But  the  great  preacher  did  not  succeed  in 
this  mission,  though  he  was  himself  greatly  im- 
pressed by  her  beauty  and  intellectual  charm. 
Her  marriage  with  the  Marquis  du  Deffand  was  an 
unhappy  one,  and  they  were  soon  separated.  She 
then  plunged  into  all  the  gallantries  and  follies  of 
that  depraved  society  which  constituted  the  Re- 
gent's court.  She  gathered  about  her  all  the  bril- 
liant men  of  her  day.  She  kept  up  a  correspondence 
with  some  of  the  foremost  thinkers  in  Europe.  She 
made  her  soire'es  at  her  hotel  in  the  Rue  St.  Dom- 
inique the  gathering-point  for  all  that  was  select  in 
Parisian  society,  including  the  eminent  foreigners 
who  visited  that  city. 

Becoming  blind  when  between  fifty  and  sixty 
years  old,  she  chose  Mademoiselle  d  1'Espinasse  as 
reader  and  companion.  But  growing  jealous  aftet 
a  time  of  the  attentions  p."1  id  this  young  lady,  she 


186  French  Literature, 

parted  with  her.  Her  rival,  however,  took  away 
from  the  saloon  of  the  marquise,  D'Alembert  and 
many  more  of  her  admirers.  The  correspondence 
of  Madame  du  Deffand  with  D'Alembert,  Henault, 
Montesquieu,  the  Duchesse  du  Maine,  Horace  Wai- 
pole,  and  Voltaire,  is  of  great  interest  as  making 
part  of  the  memoirs  of  that  age  of  materialism  in 
philosophy  and  of  corruption  in  society. 

Louise  Florence  Petronille  de  la  Live  d'fipinay 
(1725-1783)  married  her  cousin,  and,  like  the  Mar- 
quise du  Deffand,  failed  to  find  happiness  in  mar- 
ried life.  Her  husband  was  a  debauchee.  Her  taste 
was  for  men  of  genius.  When  Rousseau  came  to 
Paris,  she  took  a  fancy  to  him  and  gave  him  the 
Hermitage  for  a  residence.  This  was  a  little 
house  in  the  woods  of  Montmorency  on  land  of  her 
husband's.  Rousseau  and  Grimm,  however,  quar- 
reled and  involved  Madame  D'fipinay  in  the  dis- 
pute, which  ended  in  Rousseau's  becoming  again  a 
wanderer  and  eventually  calumniating  the  woman 
who  had  befriended  him.  She  had,  however,  to 
the  last,  a  select  circle  of  literary  men  around  her. 
Under  the  direction  of  Diderot,  she  took  Grimm's 
place,  on  his  leaving  Paris,  in  preparing  for  the 
German  princes,  criticisms  of  French  literature. 
She  also  produced  an  educational  work  of  some 
merit,  Conversations  d*]Emile.  To  this  must  be 
added  her  work  called  Les  Confessions  du  Comte 
de  *  *  *  ,  together  with  a  large  correspondence 
carried  on  with  Grimm,  Diderot,  Rousseau,  and 
others. 

Another  famous  entertainer  of  literary  men  in 
this  period,  and  herself  a  little  of  an  author  was 
Madame  Geofirin. 

Marie  Therese  Geoffrin  (1699-1777)  was  born  at 
Paris.  Her  father  was  a  valet-de-charnbre  named 
Rodet.  But  her  marriage  to  a  very  rich  manufact- 
urer and  his  death  soon  after  left  her  at  an  early 
age  the  mistress  of  an  immense  fortune.  She  drew 
literary  men  around  her,  and  her  wealth  was  of 


Rousseau,  the  Stage,  and  the  Encyclopedists.   187 

great  assistance  in  the  publication  of  the  Encyclo- 
pedie.  She  is  said  to  have  contributed  no  less  than 
100,000  francs  for  that  purpose.  She  was  not  only 
liberal  to  men  of  letters,  but  bestowed  her  gifts 
with  a  delicacy  which  gave  them  double  value. 
Her  attentions  to  distinguished  foreigners  won  h3r 
their  esteem  and  affection.  Poniatowski,  to  whom 
she  had  been  particularly  kind,  announced  to  her 
his  elevation  to  the  throne  of  Poland  in  the  words: 
'•Mamma,  your  son  is  king."  He  afterwards  in- 
duced her  to  visit  Warsaw,  and  received  her  there 
with  a  truly  royal  welcome.  Her  treatise,  Sur  la 
Conversation,  and  her  Lettres  were  published  after 
her  death  by  Morellet. 

Madame  D'Houdetot  and  Madame  Suard  should 
also  be  mentioned  as  eighteenth  century  queens  of 
society.  Some  of  Madame  D'Houdetot's  sweet- 
verses  still  hold  a  place  in  collections  of  French 
poetry.  Madame  Geoffrin,  Madame  d'Houdetot, 
and  Madame  Suard  were  all  famous  in  their  day 
for  their  salons,  where  all  that  was  witty,  elegant, 
and  distinguished  found  a  glad  welcome  and  con- 
genial surroundings. 


188  French  Literature. 


XIV. 

ON   THE   EVE  OF  THE   REVOLUTION. 

WE  have  not  yet  completed  the  roll  of  Voltaire's 
and  Eousseau's  contemporaries.  But  the  ablest  of 
them,  Buffon,  must  be  reserved  until  some  minor 
writers,  not  mentioned  yet,  have  been  disposed  of. 

Charles  Pineau  Duclos  (1704-1772)  was  a  Bre- 
ton. As  a  writer  of  romance  and  history,  he  was 
held  in  great  estimation  by  his  contemporaries. 
His  romances  were  Acajou  et  Zirphile  and  La  Bar- 
onne  de  Luz.  His  principal  serious  work  was  the 
Histoire  de  Louis  XI.  He  also  produced  memoirs 
of  the  reigns  of  Louis  XIV.  and  XV.  He  was  cold 
and  mannered  in  his  historical  writings. 

Dumarsais  (1676-1756)  was  of  note  mainly  as  a 
grammarian.  Geruzez  praises  his  method  as  supe- 
rior to  that  of  Duclos,  who  labored  in  that  field 
also.  The  same  critic  accords  to  another  gramma- 
rian, Beauzee  (1717-1789),  superiority  in  originality 
and  profundity ;  and  to  still  another,  Court  de  Gebe- 
lin  (1725-1784),  excellence  in  invention,  whatever 
that  may  mean.  To  Rulhie're  (1735-1791)  he  also 
accords  superiority  over  Duclos,  as  historical  writer, 
eulogizing  the  Histoire  de  TAnarclne  de  Poloyne,  in 
which  he  thinks  Rulhiere  has  shown  himself  an 
able  painter  and  profound  political  thinker.  Duclos's 
true  title  to  remembrance,  in  Geruzez's  judgment, 
rests  on  his  Considerations  sur  les  Mceurs. 

Vauvenargues  (1715-1747)  was  a  writer,  like  La 
Rochefoucauld,  of  thoughts  and  maxims.  De- 
voted, in  spite  of  frequent  illness,  to  earnest  inquiry 
into  moral  truth  and  the  nature  of  man,  he  might, 
had  he  lived  longer,  have  taken  an  eminent  place 
among  moralists.  The  contrast  in  spirit  and  tone 


On  the  Eve  of  the  Revolution.  189 

which  he  presents  to  the  age  in  which  he  lived  adds 
to  his  merit,  and  it  is  refreshing  to  find  so  pure  a 
believer  in  virtue  amid  that  throng  of  scoffers. 

It  is  a  credit  to  Voltaire,  that  he  held  Vauven- 
argues  in  high  regard  and  esteem.  Duclos  and 
Van ven argues  stand  together  in  the  unspiritual  at- 
mosphere of  their  age  as  almost  the  only  sober 
thinkers. 

The  Gomte  de  Tressan  (1705-1783)  led  the  way 
in  resuscitating  the  literature  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
the  fabliaux  and  the  legends  of  the  Round  Table. 

Classical  studies  were  kept  from  utter  decline  by 
the  labors  of  the  President  de  Brosses  (1706-1777). 

One  of  the  first  of  the  many  attempts  which 
have  been  made  to  introduce  the  modern  reader  to 
the  inner  life  of  antiquity,  was  the  Voyage  du 
Jenne  Anacharris  en  Grece,  by  Jean  Jacques  Bar- 
tlielemy  (1716-1795).  The  Abbe  makes  his  Ana- 
charsis  journey  from  Scythia  to  Athens  and  there 
observe  the  peculiarities  of  Greek  life  and  manners. 
Though  full  of  anachronisms,  the  characteristics  of 
Greek  life  at  several  different  periods  being  con- 
founded together,  it  is  a  work  of  some  charm, 
helped  greatly  to  popularize  the  knowledge  of  an- 
cient life,  and  has  been  imitated  in  later  times  by 
Becker  in  his  Gallus  for  Roman  and  Charicles  for 
Hellenic  life.  Barthelemy  was  a  man  of  extensive 
learning.  Greek,  Hebrew,  Syriac,  Arabic,  and 
Chaldee  were  among  his  studies.  His  first  distinc- 
tion was  that  obtained  by  his  discovery  of  the  Pal- 
myran  alphabet.  The  Revolution  deprived  him  of 
his  offices,  and  rudely  disturbed  his  studies. 
Among  his  works  were  Reflexions  sur  I1  Alphabet  et 
la  Lanf/ue  de  Palmyre,  Explication  de  la  Mosaique 
de  Palestrine,  and  a  romance  entitled  Caryte  et 
Poly 'dor e. 

Another  man  of  learning  was  the  eminent  phy- 
sician, Paul  Joseph  Barthez  (1734-1806).  lie 
founded  at  Montpellier  a  medical  school  which  had 
a great  reputation  all  over  Europe.  He  was  ruined  by 


190  French  Literature. 

the  Revolution;  but  Napoleon  recalled  him  from 
exile,  and  bestowed  honors  and  dignities  upon  him. 
His  Nouveaux  Elements  de  la  Science  de  VHomme  ad- 
vocated a  system  founded  on  dynamical  principles. 
He  wrote  also  Nbuvelle  Mecanique  des  Mouvements  de 
I  Homme  et  des  Animaux,  Traitement  des  Maladies 
Goutteuses,  and  Consultation  de  Medicine.  These  are 
purely  scientific  works  ;  but  I  shall  more  than  once 
have  occasion  to  mention  medical  writers  and  other 
specialists  among  the  attractive  writers  in  the  French 
language,  for  that  clearness  of  statement  and  liveli- 
ness of  illustration,  as  well  as  enthusiasm  of  tone, 
which  have  only  in  our  day  made  science  popular 
with  the  great  mass  of  English  readers,  were  culti- 
vated at  a  much  earlier  period  by  the  French  men 
of  science. 

Another  earnest  worker  in  these  times  was 
Thomas  (1732-1785),  a  philosophical  writer  in  the 
manner  of  Epictetus  and  Marcus  Aurelius.  There 
is  too  much  strain  and  emphasis,  however,  in  his 
sententious  utterances.  His  Eloyes  have  too  much 
of  the  rhetorician's  art  about  them  to  please,  though 
the  sentiments  are  noble.  In  his  verses  the  same 
vice  of  self-conscious  effort  spoils  the  effect. 

Among  the  scholarly  minds  of  the  period  was  the 
Abbe  de  Mably  (1709-1785),  the  author  of  Les  En- 
tretiens  de  Phocion  and  Observations  sur  VHistoire  de 
France.  He  compared,  greatly  to  the  discredit  of 
the  moderns,  the  institutions  of  the  ancient  repub- 
lics with  those  of  his  own  day. 

Of  .writers  for  the  stage,  besides  those  already 
mentioned,  there  were  Mercier  (1740-1814),  and 
Sedaine  (1717-1797).  Sedaine  was  an  uneducated 
genius.  His  Philosophe  sans  le  Savoir,  produced 
for  the  Theatre  Francais;  Le  Deserteur  and  Rich- 
ard Cceur-de-Lion,  written  for  the  Opera  Comique ; 
arid  Aline,  Reine  de  Golconde,  written  for  the  Grand 
Opera,  were  pieces  characterized  by  excellent  taste 
and  exquisite  naturalness. 

Jacques  Cazotte  (1720-1792),  was  first  brought 


On  the.  Eve  of  the  Revolution.  191 

into  notice  by  a  mock  romance  and  a  coarse  song. 
He  afterwards  wrote  his  Roman  d1  Olivier  and  Le 
D  table  Amour eux.  He  also  continued  with  admirable 
skill  Voltaire's  account  of  the  civil  war  in  Geneva. 
Suddenly  he  became  notorious  as  a  pretender  to  the 
gift  of  prophecy ;  and  La  Harpe  tells  a  story  of  his 
breaking  out,  in  the  time  of  his  mysticism,  at  the 
close  of  a  gay  banquet,  into  a  rhapsody  in  which 
he  related  to  the  carousers  around  him,  with  all  the 
precision  of  a  Highland  Scot's  vision  of  second- 
sight,  the  fate  which  awaited  each  one  of  them. 
He  himself,  adhering  to  the  royal  cause  during  the 
revolutionary  storm,  fell  a  victim  to  the  rage  and 
fear  of  the  bloody  tribunals  of  that  time. 

I  have  mentioned  La  Harpe  before,  in  treating 
of  the  friends  and  eulogizers  of  Voltaire. 

Jean  Pierre  Claris  de  Florian  (1755-1794)  was 
one  of  those  poets  and  romancers  who  pretend  only 
to  amuse.  Protected  by  the  Due  de  Penthievre, 
he  was  suspected  of  "incivism"  on  the  outbreak  of 
the  Revolution,  and  suffered  imprisonment.  His 
first  literary  success  was  a  poetical  epistle  called 
Voltaire  et  le  Serf  du  Mont  Jura.  His  eclogue, 
Ruth,  was  also  crowned  by  the  Academy.  In  his 
Qalatee,  he  imitated  Cervantes;  and  in  his  Numa 
Pompilius,  Fenelon.  Other  works  of  his  were  his 
Fables;  his  GonsalvedeCordove;  a  romance  founded 
on  the  story  of  William  Tell,  which  he  worked 
at  during  his  imprisonment,  but  never  finished; 
and  an  abridgement  of  Don  Quixote.  His  best  work 
was  a  pastoral  entitled  Estelle. 

A  poet  imbued  with  thoroughly  Hellenic  tastes 
and  genius  makes  a  marked  contrast  to  the  super- 
ficially romantic  tone  of  Florian.  This  was  Andre- 
Marie  de  Chenier  (1762-1794).  Born  in  Constanti- 
nople, he  traveled  much  in  after  years.  His  poems 
were  for  the  most  part  idyllic.  Such  are  Le  Men- 
dicant, UAveuyle,  and  Le  Jeune  Malade.  Shortly 
before  the  Revolution,  he  produced  his  Elegies,  the 
Art  d1  Aimer,  &  Invention,  Hermes,  Susanne,  andZa 


192  French  Literature. 

Liber  te.  He  took  an  active  part  in  the  Revolution, 
opposing  the  Jacobins  and  the  execution  of  the 
King.  Resisting  the  arrest  of  a  lady  in  whose 
house  he  was  living  at  Passy,  he  was  arrested  and 
imprisoned.  Before  his  execution,  he  wrote  some 
striking  poems. 

Marie-Joseph  de  Che'nier  (1764-1811),  younger 
brother  of  Andre",  was  also  born  in  Constantinople. 
His  first  tragedy,  Azemire,  was  almost  a  failure. 
His  next,  Charles  IX.,  still  keeps  a  place  on  the 
stage.  After  these  appeared  Henry  VIII.,  Anne  de 
Boulen,  the  Mort  de  Galas,  Gains  Gracchus,  Timo- 
leon,  Fenelon,  and  Cyrus.  He  also  put  on  the  stage 
a  version  of  Lessing's  Nathan  the  Wise,  and  trans- 
lations of  the  (Edipus  Turannos  and  CEdipus  at 
Colonos  of  Sophocles.  His  lyric  poems  are  fall  of 
freshness  and  elevation  of  tone.  His  Epitres  are 
able,  and  one  of  them,  the  Epitre  sur  la  Calomnie, 
is  considered  by  French  critics  as  worthy  of  the 
highest  praise.  His  Satires  are  also  ranked  very 
high  by  his  countrymen.  His  imitations  of  Ossian 
will  recall  to  the  minds  of  readers  of  history  the 
prevalence  of  a  taste  in  France  for  that  wild  and 
cloudy  bombast,  which  marked  the  effort  of  the 
revolutionary  spirit  to  shake  off  even  in  literary  art 
the  bonds  of  order,  and  which  made  Napoleon  in 
his  early  days  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  Macpher- 
son's  rhapsodies.  Chenier  was  also  eminent  as  a 
prose- writer.  His  Tableau  de  la  litterature  frangaise 
depuis  1789  enjoys  a  high  reputation.  He  took  a 
more  prominent  part  than  his  brother  in  the  stormy 
scenes  of  the  Revolution,  being  at  the  head  of 
several  of  the  public  bodies  so  rapidly  organized  in 
those  ever-changing  days.  He,  however,  gave  in 
his  adhesion  to  the  Empire,  and  it  was  at  Napole- 
on's request  that  he  prepared  his  work  on  recent 
French  literature.  Among  many  odes  of  his  was 
the  famous  Chant  du  Depart. 

Sjbastien  Roch-Nicholas  Chamfort  (1741-1794) 
was  the  illegitimate  son  of  a  strolling  actress.  He 


On  the  Eve  of  the  Revolution.  193 

began  life  with  only  the  name  "  Nicolas ";  but, 
getting  into  the  College  des  Grassins,  he  worked 
well  and  won  prizes.  Assuming  the  name  of 
"  Chamfort,"  he  began  his  literary  career  by  writ- 
ing sermons  for  lazy  cure's  at  a  louis  apiece.  Com- 
peting successfully  for  one  of  the  Academy  prizes, 
the  gay  world  was  henceforward,  open  to  him.  His 
brilliant  and  bitter  talk  made  him  much  admired. 
Madame  Helvetius  entertained  him  for  some  years 
at  Sevres.  He  won  other  prizes,  and  finally  went 
to  court  under  the  protection  of  the  Duchesse  de 
Grammont.  Retiring  to  Auteuil,  after  attaining  a 
brilliant  place  in  the  world  and  experiencing  only 
disgust  with  it,  he  there  fell  in  love  with  a  lady  of 
the  household  of  the  Duchesse  du  Maine,  and  mar- 
ried her.  But,  six  months  after  the  nuptials,  his 
wife  died,  leaving  him  more  bitter  than  ever  in  his 
views  of  life.  When  Mirabeau  began  to  undertake 
the  perilous  task  of  guiding  the  storm  of  the 
Eevolution,  Chamfort  came  heartily  to  his  side,  and 
helped  him  with  the  literary  part  of  his  orations; 
for,  though  Mirabeau  was  a  marvel  in  delivery,  it 
was  to  Chamfort  and  Dumont,  it  seems,  that  he  was 
mainly  indebted  for  his  ideas  and  their  form. 

Chamfort  took  an  earnest  part  in  the  struggle, 
and  was  one  of  the  storming  party  that  broke  first 
into  the  Bastille.  But,  criticising  the  Convention 
as  bitterly  as  he  had  criticised  the  court,  he  fell 
before  that  new  tyranny.  It  was  he  who  made 
the  political  fortune  of  the  Abbe  Sie*yes,  by  giving 
him  the  striking  title  to  his  pamphlet:  "What  is 
the  Third  Estate?  Everything.  What  has  it? 
Nothing."  He  left  few  writings.  His  fame  rested 
chiefly  on  his  brilliant  talk.  His  best  works  were 
an  IJJloge  of  Moliere  and  one  of  La  Fontaine,  as  well 
as  a  pretty  comedy  entitled  La  Jeune  Indienne. 

Over  aprainst  the  pessimist,  Chamfort,  who  de- 
spaired  of  human  nature  and   was  always   saying 
bitter  things  of  it,  should  be  set  the  sweet  temper 
13 


194  French  Literature. 

and  joy  in  God  and  nature  of  Bernardin  de  Saint- 
Pierre. 

Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre  (1737-1814)  was  one 
of  those  souls  that  remain  optimist  in  spite  of  many 
and  long -continued  trials.  His  imagination  was 
always  pleasing  itself  with  charming  illusions,  and 
dissappointments  had  no  power  to  embitter  his 
spirit.  The  justice  and  mercy  of  God,  the  consola- 
tions of  human  love,  and  the  ineffable  charm  of  na- 
ture were  for  him  beautiful  verities  that  took  the 
sting  from  all  that  was  painful  in  the  immediate 
present.  His  Etudes  de  la  nature  is  a  work  that  re- 
veals at  once  his  key-note,  belief  in  the  possible 
harmony  of  God,  Nature,  and  Man.  His  style  is 
as  beautiful,  as  his  imagination  is  rich,  pure,  and 
chaste.  His  Vceuxd'un  Solitaire  breathes  the  same 
spirit,  while  it  is  to  that  dominant  note  of  Christian 
philosophy  that  his  tropical  tales,  Paul  et  Virginie 
and  the  Chaumiere  indienne,  owe  their  freedom  from 
the  taints  which  like  subjects  handled  by  Eousseau 
would  infallibly  have  had.  Paul  et  Virginie,  the 
delight  of  childhood,  even  in  translated  form,  is 
really  a  work  of  genius.  As  Geruzez  says  of  it,  "  it 
has  that  grace  of  eternal  youth  which  time  withers 
not."  Few  prose  idylls  have  ever  been  written  with 
a  skill  so  poetic  and  artistic.  The  grouping,  the 
coloring,  the  atmospheric  tone  are  all  those  of  the 
painter.  Everything  about  the  story  is  picturesque. 
To  the  colder  criticism  of  the  mature  mind  it  is  too 
much  so;  there  is  too  much  of  that  theatrical 
grace  and  beauty  for  absolute  truth  to  nature.  But 
to  the  guileless  fancy  of  childhood  it  is  true  and 
charming. 

The  Abbe"  PreVost  (1697-1763)  ought  not  to  be 
forgotten  when  mention  is  made  of  the  romancers 
of  this  period.  Kousseau's  contemporary,  he 
painted  in  his  Manon  Lescaut  a  picture  of  passion 
as  glowing  as  that  of  the  Nouvelle  Helo'ise,  yet  free 
from  the  over-strained  sentiment  and  the  disordered 
morality  of  Kousseau.  It  is  the  most  wonderful 


On  the  Eve  of  the  Revolution.  195 

picture  of  single-minded  devotion  to  an  unworthy 
mistress  in  all  literature. 

Among  the  scientific  contributors  to  the  Encyclo- 
pedic was  Condorcet. 

Jean  Antoine  Nicolas  de  Caritat,  Marquis  de 
Condorcet  (1743-1794),  was  one  of  the  most  emi- 
nent scientists  of  his  age.  His  Essai  sur  le  Calcul 
Integral  gained  him  early  in  life  a  seat  in  the 
Academic  des  Sciences.  His  Eloyes  des  Academi- 
ciens  Morts  avant  1699  won  him  still  higher 
honors.  He  won  also  a  prize  from  the  Berlin  Acad- 
emy by  his  theory  of  comets.  His  Eloges  et  Pensees  df. 
Pascal  does  credit  to  his  heart  as  well  as  his 
head.  During  the  Revolution  he  took  a  prominent 
part,  acting  in  general  with  the  Girondists,  and 
falling  with  them  when  they  fell.  During  his 
time  of  concealment  he  wrote  his  Esquisse  des  Pro- 
grbs  de  T Esprit  Humain.  He  was  finally  arrested, 
and  one  morning  was  found  dead  in  prison. 

The  great  master  of  style  among  the  writers  who 
were  now  devoting  themselves  to  that  study  of  na- 
ture which  became  so  absorbing  a  passion  in  the 
next  century,  was  Buffon. 

George  Louis  Leclerc,  Comte  de  Buffon,  (1707- 
1788),  after  traveling  through  France  and  Italy 
with  Lord  Kingston  and  his  tutor,  a  man  of  scien- 
tific tastes,  accompanied  them  to  England,  where, 
to  improve  his  English,  he  translated  works  of 
Newton  and  Hales.  Appointed  in  1739  Intendant 
of  the  Royal  Garden  and  Museum,  his  mind  was 
directed  especially  to  the  study  of  zoology,  which 
resulted  in  his  undertaking  his  Histoire  Naturelle,  a 
work  covering  thirty-six  volumes.  It  was  from 
this  work  that  Oliver  Goldsmith  avowedly  bor- 
rowed the  greater  part  of  his  Animated  Nature. 
The  task  to  which  Buffon  devoted  fifty  years  of  his 
life  was  no  less  than  the  description  and  explana- 
tion of  nature  as  a  whole  and  in  all  its  parts.  His 
work  has  no  great  scientific  value  now,  but  his 
method  is  still  esteemed  by  scientists.  "  Up  to  his 


196  French  Literature. 

time,"  says  Cuvier,  "the  history  of  nature  had 
been  written  with  fulness  only  by  compilers  who 
had  no  ability;  the  other  general  works  offered 
only  dry  nomenclatures.  Excellent  and  very  nu- 
merous observations  existed,  but  all  upon  parlk-u- 
lar  points.  Button  conceived  the  project  of  com- 
bining, on  a  vast  plan  and  with  the  eloquent  dic- 
tion of  Pliny,  the  profound  views  of  Aristolle  with 
the  exactness  and  the  minuteness  of  detail  with 
which  the  moderns  had  observed  facts." 

Button  did  not  begin  his  life-work  until  he  was 
thirty-three  years  old.  But  he  had  early  prescribed 
for  himself  a  system  of  study,  which  he  would  not 
permit  himself  to  deviate  from,  setting  apart  a  cer- 
tain number  of  hours  each  day  for  this  purpose. 
At  six  every  morning  it  was  a  servant's  duty  to 
wake  him  up.  This  duty  was  discharged  by  the 
same  man  for  sixty  years,  and  this  faithful  valet's 
testimony  was  that  his  master  had  never  once 
broken  the  rule  which  he  had  imposed  upon  him 
self.  Method  like  this  tells.  A  vast  deal  of  work 
can  be  accomplished  by  the  man  who  so  regulates 
his  life.  It  goes  far  to  sustain  Button's  own  defini- 
tion of  genius,  as  "a  long  patience." 

His  account  of  the  origin  of  the  earth  and  the 
growth  of  fauna  and  flora  upon  it,  with  their  subse- 
quent development  from  natural  causes,  is  of 
course  in  many  points  behind  the  present  lights  of 
science.  But,  viewed  as  a  whole,  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  his  theory  is  in  the  main  that  which  the  as- 
tronomers and  geologists  of  our  day  still  hold.  In- 
stead of  the  nebular  hypothesis,  however,  he  sup- 
poses the  earth  to  have  been  brought  into  being  by 
the  collision  of  a  comet  with  the  sun,  a  part  of  the 
incandescent  mass  of  that  luminary  having  been 
struck  off'  into  space  and  by  the  laws  of  gravitation 
and  centrifugal  force  assuming  its  ultimate  shape 
and  rotation. 

Leaving  this  subject  and  his  investigation  of  in- 
organic matter,  as  well  as  the  history  of  the  vege- 


On  the  Eve  of  the  Revolution.  197 

table  kingdom — which  he  handles  very  superfi- 
cially— we  come  to  the  animal  kingdom,  where  he 
is  more  at  home.  He  begins  by  rejecting  all  sys- 
tems of  classification.  He  figures  to  himself  a  man 
who  sees  for  the  first  time  the  creatures  around 
him,  animate  and  inanimate,  without  any  precon- 
ceived notions  to  embarrass  his  judgment.  He 
then  traces  the  process  of  natural  classification 
which  must  go  on  in  such  a  man's  mind — the  sep- 
aration of  the  animate  from  the  inanimate;  the 
division  of  objects  into  animal,  vegetable,  and  min- 
eral; the  division  of  the  animals  into  quadrupeds, 
birds,  and  fishes;  the  separation  of  the  quadrupeds 
into  the  domesticated  and  the  wild.  Buffon  took 
this  method  himself.  Later,  however,  he  modified 
the  disdain  of  scientific  method  with  which  he 
had  set  out,  notably  in  his  natural  history  of 
birds. 

In  truth,  what  Buffon  really  excelled  in  was  his 
eloquent  manner  of  setting  forth  what  he  knew, 
rather  than  in  profound  or  accurate  knowledge. 
Yet  his  knowledge  was  beyond  doubt  copious  and 
extensive.  He  was  aided,  too,  by  Daubenton  in 
the  preparation  of  the  details  of  his  work.  Com- 
bining the  dry  facts  of  anatomy  and  physiology 
with  an  animated  description  of  the  habits  of  ani- 
mal life  and  the  homes  and  haunts  of  the  creatures 
whose  framework  Daubenton  had  just  analyzed,  he 
made  a  long  step  towards  popularizing  science,  a 
rare  feature  of  genius  in  his  time,  and  one  that  con- 
stituted no  small  part  of  his  charm. 

In  his  history  of  man,  he  is  decidedly  antago- 
nistic to  the  school  which  in  our  day  seeks  to  con- 
nect man  closely  with  the  rest  of  the  animal  crea- 
tion. "Man,"  says  he  emphatically,  " is  not  more 
reasonable,  not  more  spiritual,  for  having  abun- 
dantly exercised  his  ears  and  his  eyes.  One  does 
not  see  that  people  of  obtuse  senses,  the  short- 
sighted, the  deaf,  the  defective  in  the  sense  of  smell, 
have  less  intelligence  than  others.  This  is  an  evi« 


198  French  Literature. 

dent  proof  that  there  is  in  man  something  more  than 
an  interior  animal  sense."  He  declares  for  the  ex- 
istence of  the  soul.  It  is,  he  says,  of  a  different 
nature  from  matter,  and  thought  is  its  form.  As 
a  naturalist,  he  takes  pains  to  deny  to  the  brutes 
any  share  in  this  unique  possession. 

Style  was  a  study  with  Buffon.  He  labored 
strenuously  to  express  himself  in  the  best  manner, 
correcting  again  and  again,  reading  aloud  what  he 
had  written,  to  have  the  witness  of  his  ears  to  the 
perfection  of  his  periods,  and  in  his  heart  believing 
that  he  improved  in  this  matter  as  he  grew  older. 
His  supreme  value  for  style  made  him  even  unjust 
to  extemporaneous  oratory;  nor  is  it  likely  that  he 
could  really  understand  the  fiery  and  impassioned 
eloquence  of  an  age  less  cold,  didactic,  and  skepti- 
cal than  that  in  which  he  lived. 

The  corruption  of  the  court,  a  ruinous  financial 
system,  the  wide  spread  of  atheistic  doctrines  and 
theories  subversive  of  all  government,  the  oppres- 
sive privileges  of  the  nobility  maintained,  in  the 
face  of  the  growing  wealth  and  knowledge  of  the 
commons,  were  now  rapidly  driving  the  country 
toward  revolution.  An  eager,  inventive,  fertile, 
and  brilliant  spirit,  of  boundless  audacity,  nerve, 
and  coolness,  came  to  the  front ;  and,  first  by  open 
conflict  with  the  corrupt  judiciary  of  the  land,  and 
then  by  bold  dramatic  lessons,  did  more  to  open  the 
eyes  of  the  people  to  the  true  state  of  affairs  than 
any  other  one  man.  This  was  Beaumarchais.  In 
the  course  of  his  long  law-suit  against  Goesman,  a 
Counsellor  of  the  Maupeou  Parlement,  he  clearly 
set  before  the  world  the  monstrous  character  of  that 
justice  which  should  have  been  the  last  and  sure 
resort  of  the  oppressed.  He  took  to  the  theatre 
the  same  gayly  mocking,  penetrating  wit,  taking 
society  to  pieces  with  the  scalpel  of  an  Aristophanes 
and  showing  the  sores  that  were  eating  into  every 
vital  part. 

The  philosophic  spirit  was  already  reigning  on 


On  the  Eve  of  the  Revolution. 

the  boards,  as  in  every  department  of  literature. 
Tragedy  was  full  of  tirades  against  fanaticism ; 
comedy  sparkled  with  epigrammatic  sayings  that 
cut  at  the  root  of  authority.  But  Beaumarchais 
was  bolder,  wittier,  more  terribly  iconoclastic  than 
his  fore-runners.  His  Figaro  was  the  very  incarna- 
tion of  the  spirit  of  revolution.  It  is  amazing  that 
an  arbitrary  government  tottering  on  the  verge  of 
ruin  should  have  been  so  mad  as  to  have  permitted 
the  representation  of  the  Mariaye  de  Fiyaro. 

Pierre  Augustin  Caron  de  Beaumarchais  (1732- 
1799)  was  the  son  of  a  watchmaker  and  began  his 
career  in  the  same  business.  Inventing  a  new  kind 
of  escapement,  he  had  to  maintain  his  right  to  the 
invention  before  the  Academy  of  Sciences.  This 
was  his  first  law-suit.  Making  himself  useful  to 
the  King's  daughters  by  his  skill  on  the  harp  and 
the  guitar,  he  was  recommended  by  them  to  Paris- 
Duverney,  one  of  Louis  XV.'s  ministers.  Showing 
himself  gifted  in  the  management  of  financial  mat- 
ters, he  was  warmly  befriended  by  that  minister, 
whose  kindness  he  rewarded  by  securing  what  Paris- 
Duverney  had  during  nine  years  been  longing  for, 
namely,  a  visit  from  Louis  to  the  tlcole  Militaire, 
which  the  minister  had  created  and  for  which  lie 
desired  the  prestige  of  royal  commendation.  Beau- 
marchais persuaded  the  princesses  to  visit  the 
school,  and  the  apathetic  monarch  was  then  induced 
to  follow  their  example.  In  favor  with  the  court, 
and  made  wealthy  by  marriage,  Beaumarchais  now 
began  to  devote  himself  to  literature.  His  first 
play,  Eugenie,  proving  successful,  he  followed  it  up 
with  Les  Deux  Amis,  which  was  not  so  well  re- 
ceived. They  are  serious  pieces,  very  different  in 
spirit  from  those  which  we  now  most  naturally  as- 
sociate with  the  name  of  the  gay  and  brilliant 
Beaumarchais. 

He  was  interrupted  in  his  dramatic  writing  by 
his  two  famous  suits,  the  one  against  De  la  Blache, 
the  heir  of  Paris-Duverney,  the  other  against  Goes- 


200  French  Literature. 

snan,  the  Counsellor  of  the  Maupeou  Parlement. 
Fifteen  louis  intended  to  bribe  the  Counsellor,  and 
imprudently  retained  by  his  wife,  were  the  cause 
of  this  last  suit.  Those  wonderful  JUemoires,  in 
which  he  convulsed  the  country  with  laughter  or 
moved  it  to  bitter  indignation,  at  will — in  which 
he  mingled  all  the  witty  turns  of  comedy  with  the 
invective  of  a  splendid  eloquence — in  which  he 
ruined  the  reputation  of  his  judges  and  made  his 
own,  though  he  lost  his  case,  taught  Beaumarchais 
where  his  true  strength  lay,  and  made  him  give  up 
forever  the  serious  drama — except  in  the  third 
piece  of  his  Figaro  trilogy,  La  MZre  Coupable — 
and  turn  his  attention  to  comedy. 

Le  Barrier  de  Seville  was  at  first  only  a  comic 
opera,  filled  with  pretty  Italian  and  Spanish  airs 
which  Beaumarchais  had  picked  up  in  his  travels. 
The  Italian  comedians  refused  it,  the  chief  actor 
having  once  been  a  barber  and  objecting  to  appear 
in  the  too  familiar  character  of  Figaro.  The 
French  players  accepted  it,  but  it  failed  at  the  first 
representation.  Beaumarchais  cut  it  down  from 
five  acts  to  four,  and  then  it  had  a  brilliant  success. 
Few  comedies  are  so  amusing.  Its  successor,  La 
Folle  Journee,  ou  le  Mariage  de  Figaro,  is  also 
amusing,  but  richer  in  intrigue,  more  definitely 
political  in  its  tone  and  allusions,  and  bolder  in  its 
revelations  of  the  ingrained  immorality  and  invet- 
erate clinging  to  the  oppressive  privileges  which 
characterized  the  French  noblesse  of  that  age.  It 
was  immensely  popular.  There  were  more  than  a 
hundred  successive  representations.  This  success 
was  perhaps  as  much  due  to  the  delight  which  the 
public  took  in  the  many  indecent  situations  which 
occur  in  the  play,  as  to  their  comprehension  of  the 
political  satire  and  sympathy  with  its  bitter  pun- 
gency. The  king  and  the  court  understood  the  at- 
tacks on  all  existing  institutions  put  into  Figaro's 
mouth  ;  and  the  play  was  at  first  prohibited.  For 
four  years  Beaumarchais,  with  his  usual  persever- 


On  the  Eve  of  the  jRevoi&tiicft.  2C1 

ance,  struggled  against  tliis  resolution  of  the  gov- 
ernment. He  was  so  persistent  that  at  last  the 
government  yielded ;  and  the  laugh  that  Figaro 
raised  was  in  the  course  of  a  very  few  years 
changed  to  the  ringing  notes  of  the  £Yz  Ira  and  the 
Marseillaise.  "  It  is  only  little  men  who  fear  little 
writings,"  he  had  made  Figaro  say ;  and  the  king 
and  every  courtier  feared  to  be  classed  among  these 
"little  men." 

Not  quite  half  a  century  later,  Legare,  then 
United  States'  Minister  at  Brussels,  jots  down  in 
his  diary  a  conversation  with  Prince  Auguste 
d'Arenberg  about  Goinon's  Jfemoiret,  in  which 
mention  is  made  of  the  prodigious  run  of  the  Mar- 
riage of  Figaro.  The  Prince  remarked:  "The 
other  evening  they  acted  this  same  piece,  the  im- 
pression made  by  which,  half  a  century  ago,  I  so 
well  remember;  on  our  boards,  it  fell  lifeless  as  it 
were.  The  subject  was  out  of  date.  What  was 
bold  then,  is  now  banal — what  hit  most  forcibly, 
has,  through  subsequent  changes,  become  inappi'- 
cable.  In  short  nothing  could  be  more  flat.  The 
famous  monologue  of  the  great  barber  was  received 
without  one  token  of  effect." 

The  Kev?1n.tion  of  the  English  Colonies  in 
America  nov/  began,  and  Beaumarchais  undertook 
to  furnish  arms  and  supplies  to  the  colonies.  H< 
carried  on  this  financial  operation  under  the  dis- 
guise of  a  Spanish  mercantile  house,  and  was  ex- 
ceedingly useful  to  the  Americans  at  a  critical 
period.  He  never  recovered  the  whole  of  the  sum 
due  him  in  this  business,  and  it  was  not  until  many 
years  after  his  death  that  the  Congress  cr  '.ho 
United  States  paid  the  amount  to  his  heirs. 

A  few  years  before  the  Revolution  of  1789,  he 
undertook  a  complete  edition  of  Voltaire's  works, 
and  lost  an  immense  sum  by  it.  During  the  Revo- 
lution, he  lost  the  rest  of  his  fortune  by  bad  specu- 
lations, came  very  near  losing  his  life,  was  impris- 
oned for  a  time,  and  afterward  became  a  refugee. 


202  French  Literature. 

Returning  to  France  when  a  time  of  comparative 
quiet  had  come,  he  wrote  an  account  of  his  experi- 
ences in  Mes  Six  Epoques  and  a  powerful  but  rather 
painful  comedy  of  intrigue — almost  a  tragi-com- 
edy — entitled  L'Autre  Tartuffe,  ou  La  Mere  Coup- 
able,  in  which  the  Almaviva  family,  Figaro,  and 
Suzanne  are  once  more  introduced.  Tins  vvns  rep- 
resented for  the  first  time  at  Theatre  du  Marais  the 
26th  of  June,  1792.  Nearly  seven  years  later 
Beaumarchais  died  suddenly  and  without  sickness. 

His  Tarare  was  an  opera  of  no  great  meri  t.  He 
was  not  skilled  in  verse-making,  and  all  his  plays 
are  in  prose.  He  made  some  songs  of  which  the 
best  is  Robin,  but  he  was  only  moderately  success- 
ful in  this  department.  His  fame  must  rest  on  the 
pleadings  in  the  Goesman  case  and  the  wit  and 
boldness  of  Figaro  in  the  two  comedies  produced  be- 
fore the  Revolution,  in  which  he  figures.  Even 
Figaro  is  not  himself  in  La  Mere  Coupable. 

Among  those  who  made  their  reputation  be- 
fore the  Revolution  and  perished  under  Jacobin 
rule,  was  Bailly. 

Jean  Sylvain  Bailly  (1736-1793),  born  in  Paris, 
was  eminent  in  science  and  literature.  His  earlier 
works  were  on  astronomical  subjects.  He  also  pro- 
duced for  the  Academy  of  Sciences  eloquent  Eloges 
on  Charles  V.,  Moliere,  Corneille,  Lacaille,  Leib- 
nitz, Cook,  and  Gresset.  He  was  prominent  in  the 
early  stages  of  the  Revolution,  as  President  of  the 
National  Assembly  and  afterwards  as  Mayor  of 
Paris;  but,  refusing  to  give  way  to  the  populace 
when  they  proceeded  to  violence,  he  became  un- 
popular. While  with  his  friend,  La  Place,  at 
Melun,  he  was  seized,  brought  to  Paris,  accused  of 
being  a  royalist,  condemned,  and  executed.  His 
Memoirs  were  published  after  his  death. 

Jean  Baptist  Louvet  de  Couvray  (1760-1797), 
the  author  of  Faublas,  that  romance  of  ill-fame, 
but  also  of  a  remarkably  pure  tale,  Emilie  de  Ver- 
mont, barely  escaped  the  guillotine  in  Robespierre's 
time. 


Chateaubriand  and  Madame  de  StaeL      203 


XV. 

CHATEAUBRIAND  AND  MADAME  DE  STAEL. 

I  HAVE  nothing  to  do  here  with  the  stormy 
scenes  of  the  French  Eevolution.  Nor  need  I  stop 
to  dwell  upon  the  metaphysical  oratory  of  the  Gi- 
rondists and  the  blood-thirsty  declamations  of  the 
Mountain,  the  horrible  Carmagnoles  of  Barere,  and 
the  paper  Constitutions  of  the  Abb£  Sieyes.  The 
successive  oratorical  triumphs  of  Mirabeau,  of  Dan- 
ton,  and  of  Eobespierre  belong  to  the  province  of 
the  historian.  Such  men  have  no  place  in  a  sketch 
of  literature.  Only  those  actors  in  the  scenes  of 
revolutionary  change,  such  as  Bailly  and  General 
Dumouriez,  who  left  Memoirs  behind  them,  are  en- 
titled to  literary  mention. 

The  great  literary  names  of  the  Napoleonic 
period  are  those  of  the  Emperor's  declared  enemies, 
Chateaubriand  and  Madame  de  Stael.  Napoleon 
gathered  eminent  scientific  men  around  him;  and 
of  these  something  must  be  said.  But  we  can 
better  pursue  the  thread  of  literary  development  by 
taking  up  first  the  purely  literary  producers  of  this 
transitional  period. 

Fnm^ois- Rene,  Vicomte  de  Chateaubriand  (1768- 
184:8),  was  born  at  St.  Malo,  in  Bretagne,  and 
was  educated  at  the  College  of  Eennes.  In  his 
Memoirs,  he  describes  vividly  the  terrible  life  of 
isolation  in  which  he  grew  up,  under  the  stern  dis- 
cipline of  his  father,  in  the  sombre  castle  of  Com- 
bourg.  Born  and  bred  in  that  province  in  which 
more  than  anywhere  else  in  France  the  noble  still 
maintained  unquestioned  state  and  the  priest  still 
commanded  reverence,  he  was  to  witness  more 


204  French  Literature. 

strikingly    than   most   men  the    contrast    between 
feudal  and  revolutionary  France. 

In  early  life  he  was  procured  a  commission  as 
sub-lieutenant  in  the  regiment  of  Navarre.  He  took 
leave  of  his  father  at  the  old  castle,  never  to  see  him 
again.  Arrived  in  Paris,  his  brother  insisted  on 
presenting  him  at  Court,  and  he  records  in  his 
Memoirs  the  impressions  made  on  him  by  his  first 
sight  of  that  Court,  which  was  so  soon  to  be 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  prison  and  the  guillo- 
tine. After  a  brief  stay  in  Bretagne,  he  was  once 
more  in  Paris  and  at  Court  after  the  opening  of  the 
States-General  in  the  fatal  year,  1789.  He  gives  a 
graphic  picture  of  the  confused  and  disorderly  con- 
dition of  Parisian  society  at  this  time.  The  army 
sympathizing  with  the  people,  the  regiment  of  Na- 
varre soon  became  involved  in  the  general  defec- 
tion. Its  colonel,  the  Marquis  of  Mortemart,  with 
most  of  the  officers,  emigrated  ;  but  Chateaubriand 
withdrew  from  the  service,  took  up  a  scheme  for 
getting  up  an  expedition  to  search  for  the  North- 
west passage,  and  set  out  for  America. 

Wandering  in  the  wilds  of  America,  and  at  the 
same  time  poring  over  the  kindling  rhapsodies  of 
Kousseau,  he  received  profound  impressions  both 
from  the  grandeur  and  awful  wildness  of  nature  in 
the  primeval  forests  of  the  New  World  and  from 
the  impassioned  fervor  of  the  wandering  Genevese. 
But  both  impressions  swayed  his  genius  too  much 
in  one  direction,  and  produced  in  him  that  straining 
after  effect  which  was  his  bane.  The  result  was 
that  in  all  his  works  he  gave  way  so  much  to  the 
temptation  to  make  fine  pictures  that,  on  the  whole, 
he  must  be  regarded  as  no  more  than  a  grand  rhetori- 
cian. His  political  pamphlets,  with  all  their  in- 
consistencies, must  be  considered  his  ablest  produc- 
ions,  as  they  are  in  the  main  free  from  the  rhapsod- 
ical finery  with  which,  in  the  effort  to  embellish, 
he  really  marred  the  purity  of  his  style  in  his  more 


Chaleauhriaad  an<l  Madame  de  Stael.     205 

labored  works.  The  language  in  these  is  clear, 
firm  and  energetic. 

Reading,  while  still  in  this  country,  in  an  English 
paper  which  fell  into  his  hands  in  the  hut  of  an 
American  backwoodsman  near  the  Blue  Mountains, 
the  account  of  the  flight  of  Louis  XVI.  to  Va- 
rennes,  he  at  once  returned  to  France.  Joining  the 
"  Army  of  the  Princes,"  wounded  at  the  disastrous 
siege  of  Thionville,  and  left  for  dead  in  a  ditch,  he 
eventually  escaped  to  England,  where  he  lived  by 
giving  lessons  in  French,  writing  for  Peltier — the 
newspaper  man  whom  Mackintosh  afterwards  de- 
fended for  his  "libel  "on  Napoleon — and  translat- 
ing obscure  pamphlets.  He  almost  died,  however, 
of  starvation,  during  the  bitter  experiences  of  these 
early  London  days.  It  was  in  London,  neverthe- 
less, that  he  published  his  first  work.  This  was  an 
essay  •  Sur  les  Revolutions  anciennes  et  modernes, 
considerees  dans  leurs  Rapports  avec  la  Revolution 
Fftncaise.  The  tone^of  this  work  was  skeptical, 
and  its  political  principles  republican.  But  the 
skepticism,  which  had  been  prompted  by  personal 
sufferings,  soon  passed  away.  In  1800,  he  returned 
to  France,  and  wrote  for  the  Mercure,  publishing  in 
this  journal  his  romance  of  Atala,  with  a  preface 
in  which  he  took  occasion  to  eulogize  the  First 
Consul. 

The  following  year,  he  still  further  pleased  the 
Head  of  the  State  by  the  publication  of  his  Genie 
da  ('//r/'xtianisme,  which  chimed  in  well  with  Napo- 
leon's desire  to  propitiate  the  Church  and  to  re-es- 
tablish  public  worship  in  France.  Both  these 
works  were  welcomed  with  delight  by  the  public. 
A  burst  of  enthusiasm  was  accorded  his  Genius  of 
/A///////.  The  criticism  of  Fontanes,  in  an  ar- 
ticle which  appeared  in  the  Moniteur  Universelle  at 
the  time  the  work  was  published,  is  on  the  whole 
just  and  accurate:  "The  author  has  aimed  at  pre- 
senting not  the  theological  proofs  of  religion,  but 


206  French  Literature. 

the  picture  of  its  benefits;  he  appeals  rather  to  the 
feelings  than  to  the  reason." 

Alala  and  Rene  are  both  episodes  in  an  extended 
romance  called  Les  Natchez,  and  were  published  be- 
fore it.  The  story  of  Atala  gives  a  vivid  picture 
of  fanaticism  in  the  wild  forest  world.  Its  faults 
are  the  extravagance  of  the  language  and  the  strain- 
ing after  pathetic  effects.  " Rene"  says  De  Veri- 
cour,  "is  the  personification  of  one  of  those  moral 
maladies  which  so  often  assail  human  nature, 
blighting  all  freshness  and  vigor  in  the  soul.  Rene 
is  the  type  of  morbid  reverie — of  the  bitterness  re- 
sulting from  social  inaction,  blended  with  a  proud 
scorn  and  self-satisfaction.  His  haughty  and  soli- 
tary soul  finds  in  disdain  an  inexplicable  source  of 
superiority  over  all  men  and  things." 

A  favorite  now  with  Napoleon,  Chateaubriand 
was  sent  by  him  to  Rome  as  Secretary  of  Legation ; 
and,  later,  he  was  made  ambassador  to  the  little 
republic  of  Valais.  When,  however,  the  execution 
of  the  Due  d'Enghien  took  place,  Chateaubriand 
resigned  his  post  and  retired  from  public  life  in 
disgust. 

Two  years  later,  he  went  on  an  eastern  tour, 
visiting  Greece,  Palestine,  Egypt,  and  Carthage, 
and  returning  to  France  by  way  of  Spain.  The 
literary  fruit  of  this  trip  was  his  Itineraire  de  Paris 
a  Jerusalem.  Les  Martyrs  had  been  given  to  the 
world  a  year  or  so  before. 

After  the  first  fall  of  Napoleon,  he  issued  his 
brilliant  pamphlet  Sur  Bonaparte  et  les  Bourbons, 
full  of  jierce  invective  against  the  fallen  giant,  and 
throbbing  with  all  the  rancor  of  furious  party-spirit. 
It  may  be  compared  with  the  anti- Caesarian  temper 
of  Cicero  after  the  assassination  of  the  great  Im- 
perator. 

After  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  Chateaubriand 
became  Minister  of  State  under  Louis  XVIII.  His 
Monarchic  selon  la  Charte  was  intended  to  give 
popularity  to  the  cause  of  the  Bourbons,  but  its 


Chateaubriand  and  Madame  de  Stael.     207 

insistence  upon  the  sacredness  of  the  charter  gave 
offense  to  the  stubborn  and  wrongheaded  fanatics 
of  royalty  whom  it  sought  to  defend.  At  last  he 
became  as  obnoxious  to  the  Court,  as  Clarendon  be- 
came to  that  of  Charles  II.  when  its  dislike  to 
honesty  and  good  counsel  grew  extreme ;  and  he 
was  dismissed  from  office. 

lie  had  begun  his  Memoires  d'outre  Tombe  as  far 
back  as  in  1811,  in  the  retirement  of  a  little  coun- 
try-house, near  the  village  of  Aulnay.  But  this 
work  was  frequently  interrupted  by  the  cares  of 
political  life,  and  the  greater  part  of  it  was  reserved 
for  the  employment  of  his  later  years. 

In  1826,  he  prepared  the  first  edition  of  his  col- 
lected works.  His  publisher  gave  him  for  the 
copyright  of  this  edition  600,000  francs;  but 
Chateaubriand  returned  100,000. 

When  the  "Revolution  of  July"  came  (in  1830), 
he  was-  staying  at  Dieppe  with  that  famous  queen 
of  the  salon,  Mada-me  de  Recamier,  who  idolized 
him  somewhat  as  Mrs.  Thrale  idolized  Dr.  John- 
son. He  hastened  at  once  to  Paris.  But  on  the 
elevation  of  Louis  Philippe  to  the  throne,  he  refused 
to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance.  After  this  event  he 
wrote  several  other  political  pamphlets,  such  as 
De  la  Restauration  et  de  la  Monarchic  Elective,  and 
Du  Bannissement  de  la  Famille  de  Charles  X.;  his 
Histoire  du  Congres  de  Verone ;  his  Etudes  his- 
toriyues ;  an  Essai  sur  la  Literature  anglaise  ; 
a  very  poor  translation  of  Milton's  Paradise  Lost ; 
and  the  Memoires  d'outre  Tombe,  remarkable 
for  the  cruel  personalities  and  pitiless  egotism 
which  have  in  our  day  been  the  distinguishing 
traits  of  Carlyle's  last  remains.  Sainte-Beuve, 
in  his  Critiques  et  Portraits  Litteraires,  has  de- 
scribed in  his  lively  style  the  readings  given  of 
the  first  part  of  these  Memoirs  before  the  brilliant 
circle  that  was  wont  to  gather  at  the  Abbaye-aux- 
bois  in  1834. 

French  critics  rank  Chateaubriand  as  the  great- 


208  French  Literature. 

est  colorist  and  the  most  harmonious  prose  writer 
in  their  literature.  His  political  career  was  certainly 
full  of  apparent  inconsistencies.  But  his  aim  seems 
to  have  been  to  uphold  a  constitutional  govern- 
ment in  France,  and  both  the  legitimist  and  the 
republican  extremists  of  his  time  made  that  an 
impossibility. 

I  have  spoken  of  Madame  de  Eecamier's  devo- 
tion to  him  in  his  later  days.  Some  space  should 
be  devoted  to  this  famous  woman,  who  represented 
in  her  day  the  sort  of  influence  exercised  in  earlier 
French  society  by  the  ruelles  of  the  Marquise  de 
Eambouillet  and  the  salons  of  the  Duchesse  du 
Maine  and  of  Madame  d'Houdetot.  She  belongs  to 
literature  through  the  literary  atmosphere  to  which 
her  fascinating  powers  acted  as  a  sort  of  electric 
gathering  point,  as  well  as  in  virtue  of  the  Souvenirs 
et  Correspondance  tires  des  Papiers  de  Madame 
Recamier. 

Jeanne  FranQoise  Julie  Adelaide  Bernard  Re*- 
camier  (1777-1849),  daughter  of  a  banker  of  Lyon, 
and  wife  of  a  rich  banker  many  years  older  than 
herself,  was  beautiful  in  person  and  endowed  with 
wonderful  grace  and  charm.  She  was  the  warm 
friend  of  Madame  de  Stael,  and,  in  his  later  years, 
of  Chateaubriand.  When  he  lost  his  wife,  Chateau- 
briand tried  to  induce  Madame  de  Recamier,  who 
had  for  many  years  been  a  widow,  to  marry  him. 
But  she  preferred  their  old  relations  of  friendship. 
Sainte-Beuve  has  described  these  relations  in  his 
fine  manner ;  and,  though  I  have  not  room  for  the 
entire  passage,  a  sketch  based  upon  it  will  not  be 
out  of  place  here. 

Hers  was  a  salon  in  which  met,  under  a  most 
charming  influence,  the  most  illustrious  characters 
of  the  age.  Chateaubriand  reigned  there,  and, 
when  he  was  present,  everything  took  its  cue  and 
color  from  him.  He  was  not  always  there,  how- 
ever. There  was  talk  in  that  company  on  all 
subjects,  always  with  the  air  of  private  confidence, 


Chateaubriand  and  Madame  de  Stael.       209 

and  in  tones  less  loud  than  elsewhere.  There  was 
nothing  commonplace  there.  But  the  air  of  reserve, 
which  belonged  to  its  gentle  spirit  of  discretion  and 
good  taste,  was  tempered  by  a  general  kindliness  by 
which  the  new-comer  felt  himself  put  at  his  ease 
and  was  made  one  of  the  social  "  initiated."  Famil- 
iarity was  preserved  from  any  descent  into  those 
liberties,  which  it  is  prone  to,  by  the  air  of  distinc- 
tion which  the  manners  of  all  insensibly  took  in 
that  gracious  presence.  The  charming  mistress  of 
the  house  knew  how  to  throw  an  expression  of  in- 
terest— not  insincere,  for  her  ready  sympathies  really 
went  out  to  each  guest — into  her  reception  of  every 
remark.  She  had  that  quick  bright  look  and  smile 
of  comprehension,  which  to  all  who  essay  parlor 
conversation  must  always  be  so  winning.  No  one 
visited  there  without  taking  away  a  gratified  sense 
of  having  pleased  by  some  good  expression,  indicat- 
ing excellence  of  head  or  heart.  This  delicate 
flattery  was  the  -most  powerful  of  her  charms.  If 
Chateaubriand  was  the  pride  of  her  salon,  she  her- 
self was  the  soul  of  it.  There  was  no  form  of  dis- 
tinction which  she  did  not  woo  to  her  little  salon  of 
the  Abbaye ;  and,  once  charmed  to  her  presence,  it 
was  sure  to  be  put  in  a  good  light  there  and  with 
fit  surroundings,  so  as  to  feel  at  home  and  proud  to 
own  allegiance  to  the  queen  of  a  society  so  con- 
genial. 

She  had  also  that  tact,  that  practical  sagacity, 
which  creates  usages  from  the  simplest  observation, 
surprising  secrets  that  common  experience  offers, 
but  which  conventional  art  so  easily  ignores.  A 
little  story  I  have  read  somewhere  illustrates  this 
well.  Some  one  is  said  to  have  remarked  her  sur- 
prise that  even  strangers  seemed  to  feel  at  once  at 
their  ease  in  Madame  de  Eecamier's  salon,  and  that 
the  very  furniture  had  a  cosy  look  about  it,  seats  of 
various  kinds  falling  into  natural  groups  before  the 
room  was  half  filled.  "  Why,"  said  Madame  de 
Re"camier,  "it  is  very  simple.  When  a  really  con- 


210  French  Literature. 

genial  party  has  spent  the  evening  here,  I  order 
the  room  to  be  left  undisturbed.  The  furniture  \* 
best  arranged  for  friendly  intercourse,  just  as  they 
have  left  it." 

Of  this  society  Chateaubriand,  in  the  twenty 
years  which  remained  to  them  both,  was  the  centre, 
the  great  interest  of  her  life,  the  interest  to  which 
she  subordinated  everything.  He  had  his  antip- 
athies, his  aversions,  his  bitternesses.  She  it  was 
vho  soothed,  and  tried  to  temper  and  correct  this 
querulous  side  of  his  old  age.  She  had  the  tact  (; 
make  him  talk  when  he  was  too  prone  to  silence, 
to  imagine  good-natured  speeches  for  him  which  no 
doubt  he  had  made  in  privacy  but  did  not  seem  in- 
clined to  utter  before  witnesses.  She  had  the 
address  to  stir  him  up  even  into  gaiety.  She  could 
stimulate  him  into  his  finer  moods  and  fire  him  into 
trains  of  thought  that  made  him  eloquent. 

It  was,  then,  to  this  glorious  woman — a  creature 
gifted  with  a  genius  for  sympathy  and  a  social 
magnetism  of  marvelous  sweetness  and  power — 
that  Chateaubriand  owed  all  the  happiness  of  his 
declining  years.  He  lived  to  witness  the  opening 
scenes  of  the  Eevolution  of  1848.  Louis  de 
Lomdnie,  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  for  mid- 
July,  1848,  describes  his  dying  hours  thus  : 

"  M.  de  Chateaubriand  departed  at  a  moment  when 
the  sophisms  and  the  errors  which  he  had  combated  all 
his  life  through  were  causing  blood  to  flow  in  our  streets. 
The  battle  of  June — that  terrible  convulsion,  which 
threatened  to  carry  away  not  alone  the  republic,  but  also 
society  itself — was  the  torment  of  his  latest  days.  Seated 
before  his  open  windows,  and  already  enfeebled  by  the 
approach  of  death,  he  was  to  be  seen,  pale,  silent,  and 
sombre,  his  head  bowed  upon  his  breast,  listening  to  the 
distant  rumblings  of  civil  war.  Every  cannon-shot  drew 
from  him  sighs  and  groans  ;  but  he  was  still  permitted, 
whilst  deploring  the  necessity  of  the  combat,  to  rejoice  in 
the  victory  ;  and  to  quit  us  without  despairing  of  the 
futurity  of  France." 


Chateaubriand  a/«l  •  M-adame  de  Stael.     211 

"It  was  well  for  his  peace  of  mind  that  he  did  not 
live  a  few  years  longer,  to  witness  the  establish- 
ment of  the  second  Empire. 

Madame  de  Recamier's  friend  of  earlier  days,  the 
other  great  Frenchwoman  of  the  Napoleonic  age, 
and  Chateaubriand's  compeer  in  the  literary  field, 
was  the  Baronne  de  Stael-Holstein. 

Anne-Marie  Louise  Germaine  Necker  (1766- 
1817)  was  a  woman  of  remarkable  powers,  a  writer 
whose  mingled  charms  of  thought,  sentiment, 
and  fancy  give  her  deserved  eminence  in  the 
literature  of  France.  Her  father  was  that  able 
and  honest  Jacques  Necker,  citizen  of  Geneva 
and  banker  of  Paris,  who  was  thrice  called  to 
the  post  of  Comptroller-General  of  the  Finances  in 
the  ruinous  days  of  the  monarchy  on  the  eve  of  the 
.Revolution,  and  whose  splendid  economic  abilities 
would  have  saved  the  country  from  coming  horrors, 
had  he  not  been  over-ruled  by  an  infatuated  Court. 
.Her  mother  was  that  beautiful  and  accomplished 
.Mademoiselle  Susanne  Curchod,  whose  hand  Gib- 
bon resigned  in  obedience  to  the  will  of  his  father, 
during  the  davs  of  his  early  training  at  Lausanne. 

Necker  was  something  more  than  a  great  banker 

and  a  brilliant  master  of  political  economy.     He 

was  a  man  who  had  an  enlightened  taste  for  what 

was  best  in  literature  and  society;  and  his  house 

was  open  at  all  times  to  the  most  remarkable  men 

of  the  day.     His  daughter  was  therefore  at  an  early 

age    under  impressions  well  fitted  to    develop    in 

her  intellectual  tastes  of  a  high  order.     The  strict- 

.ness  of  her  mother's  ideas  made  it  difficult  for  her 

.to  sympathize  with  a  child  of  fervid  temperament, 

tbred  in  a  hot-house  atmosphere  of  sentiment  and 

!speculative  thought.     For,  the  young  girl  was  from 

.the  first  a  creature  of  injpulsive  and  ardent  genius. 

,  At  the  age  of  twelve,  she  wrote  a  play,  which  was 

.acted   by    herself  and  some  of  her  young  friends. 

(Her    remarkable    conversational    powers,  even    in 

.•childhood,  attracted  the  attention  of  the  eminent 


212  French  Literature. 

men  who  came  to  her  father's  house.  She  not  only 
listened  eagerly  to  the  talk  of  such  men  as  Gibbon, 
Marmontel,  Grimm,  and  the  Abbe  Eaynal ;  but 
she  was  petted  by  them  and  encouraged  to  join  in 
their  conversation.  Her  father,  too,  was  fond  of 
talking  to  her  on  themes  which  it  would  have 
seemed  absurd  to  touch  upon  with  most  children 
of  her  age.  He  was  proud  of  her  intellect,  and 
aimed  to  infuse  into  her  his  own  lofty  views  and 
thoughtful  philosophy  of  life.  From  this  familiar 
and  affectionate  intercourse  sprang  that  devoted 
love  and  pride  with  which  through  life  she  re- 
garded the  memory  of  her  father.  The  warmest 
feelings  of  her  nature  seem  to  have  been  lavished 
upon  him.  Had  she  possessed  the  gift  of  beauty,  in 
dition  to  her  other  gifts,  she  might  have  been 
wooed  with  ardor  enough  to  awaken  her  heart  to 
the  passion  of  love.  But,  being  ugly,  her  heart 
was  never  warmed  into  the  fulness  of  life,  and  her 
vivacious  intellect  usurped  all  the  intensity  of  pur- 
pose and  fire  of  brilliant  energy  which  might  other- 
wise have  been  developed  in  her  affections. 

She  made  one  of  those  matches  called  in  the 
heartless  societies  of  cities  a  mariaye  de  convenance, 
in  a  cool  and  business-like  spirit.  Being  herself  a 
great  heiress,  she  could  afford  to  dispense  with 
money  in  her  choice.  Her  mother  insisted  that 
she  should  marry  a  Protestant,  and  her  father  chose 
for  her  Eric,  Baron  de  Stael-Holstein,  an  attache  to 
the  Swedish  embassy,  who  was  expected  to  become 
ambassador  himself.  The  fact  that  he  would  reside 
rermanently  in  Paris  was  perhaps  the  greatest  in- 
Jucement  to  the  match.  The  Baron  was  a  hand- 
some man,  though  twice  her  age,  was  of  noble  birth, 
and  bore  a  fair  character.  But  there  is  little  rea- 
son to  believe  that  this  girl  of  twenty,  who  had 
wept  over  Clarissa  Harlowe,  had  a  spark  of  love  to 
give  him.  She  married  to  have  a  proper  establish- 
ment in  Paris,  and  to  open  a  salon  of  her  own,  in 
which  she"  would  be  the  acknowledged  queen  of  a 

\ 


Chateaubriand  and  Madame  de  Stael.     213 

brilliant  circle.  Swiss  by  blood,  she  was  yet  al- 
most a  typical  Frenchwoman  in  her  vivacity,  her 
gift  for  conversation,  and  her  brilliant  fancy.  That 
she  added  to  these  charms  a  masculine  vigor  of 
thought,  mingled  from  time  to  time  with  the  play 
of  witty  repartee  and  graceful  sally,  only  enhanced 
the  attractiveness  of  her  salon  by  making  it  unique. 

Her  first  literary  work,the  Lettres  sur  Rousseau,  be- 
longs to  this  period,  and  shows  that  she,  like  Cha- 
teaubriand, had  received  her  earliest  and  profoundest 
impressions  from  the  impassioned  sentimentalist  of 
Geneva.  Fervid  in  style,  and  important  as  an  in- 
dication of  tendency,  this  production  is  yet  imma- 
ture and  far  from  indicating  the  powers  displayed 
in  her  later  works. 

The  avalanche  of  revolution  soon  came,  to  throw 
these  days  of  triumph  forever  into  a  past  as  remote 
almost  to  memory  as  those  of  the  fabled  Age  of 
Gold.  But  the  troubles  that  swept  over  society, 
involving  Necker  and  his  people  in  the  common 
ruin,  served  to  bring  out  the  better  qualities  in 
Madame  de  StaeTs  nature.  Her  father  had  failed 
to  reconcile  or  satisfy  the  contending  Court  and 
People,  and  had  retired  to  Coppet  in  Switzerland. 
From  that  retreat  he  sent  pamphlet  after  pamphlet 
of  warning  into  the  France  he  had  striven  so  hard 
to  save,  and  which  had  so  often  rejected  his  coun- 
sels. But  there  were  none  to  heed  his  words.  She, 
as  Necker's  daughter  and  an  ambassador's  wife, 
possessed  for  a  while,  in  the  midst  of  that  seething 
sea  of  furious  humanity,  personal  security  and  some 
influence.  She  tried  to  get  the  royal  family  se- 
cretly to  England.  She  tried  to  save  the  Queen's 
life — though  she  had  never  been  a  favorite  with 
Marie  Antoinette — by  her  Reflexions  sur  le  Proems 
de  la  Reine,  par  Une  Femme.  She  hid  some  of  the 
proscribed  in  her  house.  She  prevailed  upon  some 
of  the  revolutionary  chiefs  to  grant  mercy  in  a  few 
instances.  After  Kobespierre's  death,  she  published 


French  Literature. 

two  pamphlets  in  favor  of  peace,  one  of  which  was 
praised  by  Pitt  in  the  English  Parliament. 

When  at  last  it  was  evident  that  no  more  was  to 
be  done,  she  joined  her  friends  in  England,  while 
her  husband  took  refuge  in  Holland  so  as  to  be 
ready  at  once  to  resume  his  diplomatic  functions 
upon  the  coming  of  a  lull  in  the  revolutionary  fury. 
Her  fellow  refugees  in  England  were  Talleyrand, 
De  Narbonne — whose  life  she  had  saved — and  the 
D'Arblay  who  afterwards  married  Miss  Burney,  the 
author  of  Evelina.  The  exiles  were  very  poor,  but 
not  very  unhappy,  in  spite  of  the  stupid  insular 
coldness  of  their  English  neighbors,  who  did  not 
understand  the  intimacy  of  Madame  de  Stael  and 
De  Narbonne,  and  talked  slanderous  gossip  about 
them. 

When  something  like  regular  government  was 
re-established  in  France,  the  Baron  de  Stael  resumed 
his  post  as  ambassador  in  Paris  ;  and  his  wife  passed 
her  time  agreeably  enough  for  some  years,  living 
alternately  with  her  father  at  Coppet  and  with  her 
husband  at  Paris. 

But  when  Napoleon  became  the  ruling  power  in 
France,  his  perception  of  the  fact  that  she  would 
always  indignantly  oppose  his  successive  steps  to- 
wards absolutism  made  him  resolute  to  keep  at 
least  her  social  influence  outside  of  the  game.  He 
first  prohibited  her  residence  in  Paris,  and  ended 
by  exiling  her  from  France  altogether.  They  were 
not  only  thoroughly  antipathetic  natures;  but 
it  is  evident  from  her  Considerations  sur  la 
Revolution  Fran<;aise,  that  she  read  his  charac- 
ter earlier  and  better  than  any  one  else — read 
it  as  the  world  is  only  recently  beginning  to 
understand  it — and  that  his  keen  eye  perceived 
this  fact  and  his  prompt  will  decided  him  to  be  rid 
at  once  of  what  was  likely  to  be  a  real  and  great 
danger.  She  was  never  blind  to  his  transcendant 
genius;  and  that  she  was  not  dazzled  by  it  to  the 
point  of  ignoring  even  for  a  moment  his  monstrous 


Chateaubriand  and  Madame  de  Stael.     215 

egotism,  is  a  wonderful  proof  of  the  clearness  of  her 
vision. 

Before  the  final  edict  of  the  First  Consul  had 
banished  her  from  France,  she  had  greatly  increased 
her  literary  reputation  by  the  publication  of  her  work 
Sur  la  Litterature  consideree  dans  ses  Rapports  avec 
VEtat  Moral  et  Politique  des  Nations,  and  her  ro- 
mance of  Dalphine.  The  "  Literature  considered  in 
its  Connection  with  Social  Institutions"  is  a  wort 
of  real  philosophic  merit.  In  this  treatise,  "all  hei 
efforts  are  directed  to  one  end — to  show  that  there 
is  a  progress ;  that  the  advance  of  knowledge  has 
been  real  and  constant,  in  spite  of  vicissitudes;  that 
we  can  trace  the  law  of  the  moral  improvement  of 
man  through  all  the  obscurities  of  time ;  and 
that  the  human  race  is  tending,  however  slowly, 
towards  a  state  of  perfection." 

Delphine  is  a  romance  full  of  eloquence  and 
passion,  but  tarnished  with  more  than  doubtful  mo- 
rality. Indeed,  it  was  denounced  as  highly  immoral 
by  the  court  journals  of  the  day,  though  their  ad- 
verse criticisms  were  prompted  by  the  wish  to 
seize  any  and  every  excuse  for  putting  a  ban  upon 
her  and  her  father,  who  about  this  time  incurred 
Napoleon's  enmity  by  the  publication  of  his  "Last 
Political  and  Financial  Views." 

She  took  greatly  to  heart  her  exile  from  her  be- 
loved Paris.  In  the  lovely  scenes  of  her  residence 
at  Geneva,  with  the  beautiful  Lake  before  her  eyes, 
she  exclaimed :  "  O  for  the  rivulet  in  the  Rue  du 
Bac!  I  would  rather  live  in  Paris  in  the  fourth 
story  and  with  a  hundred  a  year.  I  dp  not  dissem- 
ble: a  residence  in  Paris  has  always  appeared  to  me 
the  most  desirable  of  all.  I  was  born  there;  I 
passed  my  childhood  and  my  early  youth  there.  It  is 
there  alone  that  I  can  find  any  trace  of  the  generation 
that  knew  my  father,  of  the  friends  with  whom  I 
underwent  the  dangers  of  the  Revolution.  French 
conversation  exists  only  in  Paris,  and  conversation 
has  been,  since  my  infancy,  my  greatest  pleasure," 


216  French  Literature. 

Such  are  the  feelings  that  she  expresses  and  dwells 
upon  again  and  again,  in  her  Dix  Annees  cTExil. 

During  Napoleon's  absence  in  the  north  at  the 
time  he  was  planning  an  invasion  of  England,  she 
ventured  to  go  to  a  little  country-seat  of  hers  some 
ten  leagues  from  Paris.  But  her  inexorable  enemy 
became  aware  of  her  presence  and  ruthlessly  or- 
dered her  to  remove  to  a  distance  of  forty  leagues 
from  Paris.  In  spite  of  the  zealous  intercessions  in 
her  favor  of  Joseph  and  Lucien  Bonaparte,  this 
mandate  was  put  in  force,  and  she  was  obliged  to 
shift  from  place  to  place,  under  the  odious  pressure 
of  the  gendarmes.  She  could  not  long  remain  in 
France,  or  even  in  Switzerland,  and  decided  on  going 
to  Germany.  Joseph  Bonaparte  gave  her  letters  of 
introduction  for  Berlin,  and  she  set  out,  accom- 
panied by  her  devoted  friend,  Benjamin  Constant. 

At  Weimar,  she  enjoyed  the  society  of  Goethe, 
Schiller,  Wieland,  and  the  Duke  and  Duchess 
of  Weimar ;  studied  the  German  language  and 
literature ;  and  took  notes  for  the  great  work 
in  which  she  was  to  reveal  this  new  world  of 
thought  to  the  French.  At  Berlin,  she  heard  the 
news  of  the  death  of  the  Due  d'Enghien  ;  and  it  was 
here  also  that  the  intelligence  reached  her,  a  little 
later,  of  the  prostration  of  her  father.  She  hastened 
to  go  to  him,  but  was  informed  of  his  death  before 
reaching  the  confines  of  Germany.  Beaching 
Switzerland  in  an  agony  of  grief  and  self-reproach 
at  her  absence  from  him  who  had  always  been  her 
idol,  her  first  desire  was  to  pen  a  suitable  tribute  to 
his  memory.  Her  Vie  privee  de  M.  Necker,  though 
naturally  the  over-strained  estimate  of  a  too  partial 
biographer,  is  a  singularly  touching  memoir. 

From  Switzerland  she  went  to  Italy,  and  on  her 
return  composed,  while  residing  alternately  at  Cop- 
pet  and  Geneva,  her  Qorinne,  ou  V Italic.  As  a  story, 
it  has  always  seemed  to  me  a  wretched  failure,  the 
characters  morbid  and  their  conduct  affected  and 
aimless,  the  whole  conception  of  their  relations  un- 


Chateaubriand  and  Afadame  de  Stael.     217 

real  in  the  extreme.  But,  as  a  picture  of  Italy,  as 
an  impassioned  and  eloquent  delineation  of  that 
sunny  land,  the  home  of  art  and  beauty,  its  charm 
is  undoubtedly  great;  and  the  enthusiasm  with 
which  it  was  written,  the  deep  melancholy  which 
rests  like  a  lovely  veil  over  its  richest  bits  of  color- 
ing, the  excellence  of  its  criticisms  on  art  and  liter- 
ature, combined  to  give  it  a  prodigious  success.  It 
was,  however,  only  the  Italy  of  history,  the  Italy  of 
a  glorious  past  and  a  rich  inheritance  in  genius, 
that  she  found  so  near  her  heart  and  took  such  de- 
light in  painting.  She  had  little  relish  for  nature's 
charms.  She  said  once  to  Mole,  the  author  of  Es- 
sais  de  Morale  et  de  Politique,  "  If  it  were  not  for 
respect  due  to  public  opinion,  I  would  not  open  my 
window  to  see  the  Bay  of  Naples  ;  while  I  would 
travel  five  hundred  miles  to  talk  with  a  man  of 
ability." 

She  now  took  up  her  residence  in  Vienna,  and 
there  busied  herself  in  collecting  materials  for  her 
great  work,  De  VAllemayne,  a  picture  of  German 
morals,  literature,  and  philosophy.  This  is  the  most 
ambitious,  the  most  highly  labored,  and  perhaps 
the  ablest  of  her  writings.  The  judgment  of  Sir 
James  Mackintosh  on  it  is,  that  it  is  "probably  the 
most  elaborate  and  masculine  production  of  the 
faculties  of  woman."  He  asks,  "  What  woman, 
indeed,  or,  AVC  may  add,  how  many  men,  could  have 
preserved  all  the  grace  and  brilliancy  of  Parisian 
society  in  analyzing  its  nature — explained  the  most 
abstruse  and  metaphysical  theories  of  Germany  pre- 
cisely, yet  perspicuously  and  agreeably — and  com- 
bined the  eloquence  which  inspires  exalted  senti- 
ments of  virtue,  with  the  enviable  talent  of  gently 
indicating  the  defects  of  men  or  of  nations,  by  the 
skilfully  softened  touches  of  a  polite  and  merciful 
pleasantry  ?  " 

Napoleon  proscribed  this  book,  as  he  had  perse- 
cuted the  author.  The  printed  copies  were  ordered 
to  be  seized  and  burned,  and  Madame  de  Stael  vraa 


218      -  •  .French  Literature.  • 

notified  that  she  was  banished  entirely  from  France, 
the  letter  of  the  Minister  of  Police  declaring  em- 
phatically :  "  We  are  not  yet  reduced  to  seek  for 
models  in  the  nations  you  admire." 

Her  friends,  too,  were  persecuted  for  her  sake. 
Schlegel,  who  had  been  for  years  the  tutor  of  her 
two  sons,  was  ordered  to  quit  Geneva  and  Coppet. 
De  Moiitmorenci  and  Madame  Re'camier  were  con- 
demned to  perpetual  exile  for  the  crime  of  visiting 
her  at  Coppet.  As  Napoleon's  power  enlarged  its 
circle,  she  was  forced  to  get  farther  and  farther 
away.  She  went  to  Russia,  to  Sweden,  and  to 
England.  In  London,  she  published  her  work  on 
Germany,  as  it  had  been  suppressed  in  Paris. 

During  this  period  of  her  stay  in  England,  Rogers 
writes  to  Moore — whose  poetry  he  tells  him  she 
greatly  admires — in  August,  1813,  his  impressions 
of  her :  "  Strong  feeling  delights  her  most.  The 
death  of  Clarissa,  she  says  [Richardson's  heroine], 
comes  to  her  constantly  as  one  of  the  events  of  her 
life.  Her  daughter  [the  Duchesse  de  Broglie]  you 
would  like;  she  is  very  pleasing,  and  dances  a 
^hawl-dance  beautifully.  The  mother,  too,  you 
vvould  like — very  good-natured,  very  lively,  and 
eloquent.  She  speaks  English  well,  but  not 
fluently.  Pray  come  and  meet  her.  She  dines 
with  me  next  Friday." 

!  At  last  the  Restoration  came,  and  she  returned 
to  her  beloved  Paris,  occupied  herself  with  writing 
her  Dix  Annees  dExil,  had  restitution  made  her 
at  last  of  the  two  million  livres  due  from  the  royal 
treasury  on  her  father's  account,  and,  dying  at  Paris 
after  a  vain  effort  to  restore  her  health  by  a  trip  to 
Italy,  was  buried  at  Coppet.  Pier  will  revealed 
the  fact  that  she  had  secretly  married  some  six 
years  before  a  young  French  officer  named  Rocca, 
who  had  been  kindly  received  by  her  on  his  com- 
ing wounded  from  Spain  to  Geneva,  and  who  had 
conceived  a  passion  for  her  on  account  of  her  kind 
freart  and,  the  charm  of  her  conversation. 


Chateaubriand  and  Madame  de  Stael.     21S 

Few  women  liave  written  so  ably  as  she  on  so 
many  different  subjects.  To  few  of  her  sex  has  it 
been  given  to  discuss  political,  social,  philosophical, 
and  literary  questions  with  equal  force,  wit,  and 
grace.  But  it  may  safely  be  said  that  no  :woman 
has  blended  as  she  did  the  very  different  gifts  .of 
literary  skill  and  conversational  ability.  The  many 
eminent  men  whom  she  met  in  her  career  all  testify- 
to  the  brilliancy  of  her  conversation.  Bat  all,  ex- 
cept  her  French  admirers,  agree  in  hinting  or  openly 
declaring  that  their  admiration  was  not  unmingled 
with  decided  weariness.  She  talked  too  much. 
Talleyrand,  with  that  marvelous  wit  of  his  which 
has  more  surprise  in  it  than  any  one  else's,  said  in 
his  gentlest  tones,  when  taxed  with  liking  to  be 
with  Madame  Grant  after  having  enjoyed  intimacy 
with  Madame  de  Stael,  "One  must  have  been  fond 
of  Madame  de  Stael  to  get  a  relish  for  the  happi: 
ne.ss  of  loving  a  fool."  Schiller,  in  a  letter  to  Goethe 
full  of  praise  of  he*,  is  forced  to  let  fall  the  sen- 
tence, "  One's  only  grievance  is  the  altogether  unr 
precedented  glibness  of  her  tongue."  Goethe,  also 
full  of  praise  in  his  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit^ 
charges  her  with  "  never  granting,  on  the  most  im; 
portant  topics,  a  moment  of  reflection."  Bryon's 
references  to  her  in  his  private  journals  are  gener- 
ally complimentary.  He  liked  her  and  admired 
her  works.  In  London  he  saw  a  good  deal  of  her, 
and  in  Switzerland  she  was  kind  to  him.  "  In  her 
own  house,"  he  says,  "she  was  amiable;  in  any 
other  person's  you  wished  her  gone,  and  in  her  own 
again." 

These  criticisms  go  to  show  that  she  was  some- 
what overpowering  in  general  society.  But  she 
was  a  devoted  daughter,  a  staunch  friend,  a  good 
mother.  There  was  nothing  frivolous  about  her. 
In  her  writings  she  is  remarkable  for  sustained  and 
even  impassioned  earnestness.  Except  Talleyrand 
and  Napoleon — neither  of  whom  can  be  considered 
typical  Frenchmen — her  countrymen  did  not  find 


220  French  Literature. 

her  tiresome  in  conversation.  The  charm  of  her 
enthusiasm  almost  converted  Benjamin  Constant 
from  Voltairism.  He  even  testifies  that  she  under- 
stood the  art  of  listening  and  practiced  it  to  per- 
fection : 

"  Since  I  know  her  better,"  he  writes  from  Switzerland 
to  Madame  de  Charriere,  "  I  find  great  difficulty  in  not 
praising  her  incessantly,  and  in  not  manifesting  to  all 
those  to  whom  I  speak  my  interest  and  my  adnfl ration. 
I  have  rarely  seen  a  similar  combination  of  surprising 
md  attractive  qualities,  so  much  brilliancy  and  justice,  a 
benevolence  so  expansive  and  so  highly  cultivated,  so 
much  generosity,  a  politeness  so  gentle  and  so  uniform  in 
public,  so  many  charms,  so  much  simplicity  and  freedom 
in  private.  She  is  the  second  woman  I  have  found  who 
might  have  taken  the  place  of  the  whole  universe  to  me, 
who  would  have  been  of  herself  a  world  for  me ;  you 
know  who  was  the  first.  Madame  de  Stae'l  has  infinitely 
more  wit  in  intimate  conversation  than  in  public  ;  she  un- 
derstands perfectly  how  to  listen,  which  neither  you  nor  I 
thought.  She  feels  the  wit  of  others  with  as  much  pleas- 
ure as  her  own.  She  makes  those  whom  she  loves  valued 
with  an  ingenious  and  constant  attention  which  proves  as 
much  kindness  as  intellect.  In  a  word,  she  is  a  being 
apart,  a  superior  being  such  as  we  meet  perhaps  one  in  a 
century,  and  such  that  those  who  approach  her,  know  her, 
and  are  her  friends,  need  ask  no  other  happiness." 

Surely,  the  woman  who  could  call  forth  such  a 
eulogy  from  a  man  of  Constant's  extraordinary 
abilities  and  world-weary  spirit,  must  have  pos- 
sessed no  ordinary  share  of  goodness  as  well  as 
charm  of  mind  and  manner. 

Along  with  Madame  de  Stae'l  may  be  named  a  lady 
of  far  inferior  powers,  but  who,  through  her  Exiles 
of  Siberia,  is  known  in  all  lands.  This  was  Madame 
Sophie  Cottin  (1773-1807),  whose  maiden  name 
was  Eistaud.  She  was  born  at  Tonneins  and  edu- 
cated at  Bordeaux.  Married  very  early  in  life  to 
a  Parisian  banker,  she  was  a  childless  widow  at 
twenty.  She  wrote  a  number  of  romances,  Claire 
cTAlbe,  Malvina.  Amelie  Mansfield,  Mathilde,  ou 
Malek  Adhel,  and  Elisaltit\  QU  les  Exiles  de  Siberie, 


The  Scientific  Period.  223 


XVI. 

THE  SCIENTIFIC  PERIOD. 

THE  other  eminent  exiles,  who  have  a  place  in 
literature,  must  first  have  our  attention.  We  can 
then  pass  on  to  the  men  of  science  who  illustrated 
this  period. 

The  twenty-years' friend  of  Madame  de  Stae'l  and 
the  impassioned  lover  of  Madame  de  Recamier  when 
he  was  nearer  fifty  than  forty — that  Benjamin  Con- 
stant who  promised  so  much  and  performed  so 
little — was  recognized  in  his  day  as  the  most  bril- 
liant of  talkers.  Acute  and  sparkling  in  his  books; 
elegant  and  animated  in  his  letters ;  pungent,  dar- 
ing, and  witty  in  his,. speeches  from  the  tribune,  he 
possessed  powers  which  might  have  given  him  a 
noble  place  in  history  ;  but  his  early  loss  of  faith 
in  anything  spoilt  him  for  life.  His  story  is  the 
story  of  a  man  of  consummate  ability  whose  whole 
career  was  marred  by  his  utter  lack  of  serious  in- 
terest in  life.  What  he  did  accomplish  he  owed  to 
the  influence  of  the  Baronne  de  Stael. 

Henri  Benjamin  Constant  de  Rebeque  (1767- 
1830)  was  born  at  Lausanne  and  educated  in  Ger- 
many and  Scotland.  In  1796,  he  published  in 
Paris  a  pamphlet  which  won  him  some  reputation 
as  a  political  thinker.  But  he  had  already  been 
many  years  under  the  fatal  influence  of  that  fair 
friend,  Madame  de  Charriere,  to  whom  he  owed 
the  loss  of  all  true  interest  in  life. 

Isabelle  de  Charriere  was  the  daughter  of  a 
Dutch  baron,  who  had  married  her  brother's  Swiss 
teacher,  and  had  written  several  works,  among 
them  Caliste.  Her  beauty  and  intellectual  charms 
had  completely  enchained  Constant,  though  she 


222  French  Literature. 


was  nearly  thirty  years  older.  In  the  midst  of 
those  great  events  whicli  were  changing  the  world 
around  him,  in  that  momentous  year,  1790,  he 
writes  to  her  a  morbid  revelation  of  the  nothingness 
of  existence  to  him.  "  I  see  no  motives  for  any- 
thing in  this  world,"  he  says,  "  and  I  have  no  taste 
for  anything."  Two  years  later,  he  writes  to  her 
in  the  same  bitter  spirit :  "  Sick  of  everything, 
tired  of  everything,  bitter  egotist,  with  a  sort  of 
sensibility  which  serves  only  to  torment  me,  fickle 
to  a  degree  that  might  well  make  me  pass  for  mad, 
subject  to  fits  of  melancholy  which  interrupt  all 
my  plans  and  make  me  act,  while  they  last,  as  if  I 
had  given  up  everything  ; — how  can  you  expect 
me  to  succeed,  to  please,  to  live  ?  " 

Two  years  later  still,  however,  he  met  Madame 
de  Stael  in  Switzerland.  We  have  already  seen 
how  powerfully  she  impressed  him.  Her  firm  con- 
victions of  truth  and  duty  did  much  to  cure  him 
of  his  feverish  unbelief,  his  jaundiced  views  of  life. 
Her  real  goodness  of  heart  attached  him  to  her  at 
once  and  for  ever.  They  lived  much  in  each  other's 
society  both  at  Coppet  and  in  Paris ;  and,  as  we 
have  seen,  he  was  her  escort  on  her  first  visit  to 
Germany.  Sainte-Beuve  thus  describes  the  life 
they  led  together  at  Coppet  :— 

"  Literary  or  philosophical  conversations,  always  piquant 
or  elevated,  began  about  eleven  in  the  morning,  when 
they  met  at  breakfast.  These  were  resumed  at  dinner, 
continuing  until  supper,  which  took  place  at  eleven  in 
the  evening,  and  were  often  kept  up  till  midnight. 
Benjamin  Constant  and  Madame  de  Stael  took  the 
lead  in  the  conversation.  It  was  then  that  Benjamin 
Constant — who,  when  younger,  we  have  hitherto  seen 
only  blase,  substituting  for  his  too  inveterate  raillery  a 
factitious  enthusiasm,  always  a  marvelously  witty  talker, 
but  with  whom  wit  had  ended  by  inheriting  the 
fire  of  all  the  other  more  powerful  faculties  and  pas- 
sions— it  was  then  that  he  showed  himself  naturally 
with  spirit  what  Madame  de  Stael  has  proclaimed 


The  Scientific  Period.  223 

him,  the  first  mind  in  the  world ;  he  was  certainly 
the  greatest  among  distinguished  men.  The  minds 
of  these  two  at  least  always  agreed ;  they  were  sure 
of  understanding  each  other.  Nothing,  according  to  wit- 
nesses, was  so  dazzling  and  superior  as  their  conversation 
in  this  choice  circle,  these  two  holding  the  magic  raquette 
of  discourse  and  sending  backwards  and  forwards  for 
hours,  without  ever  missing,  the  volant  of  a  thousand  in- 
terchanged thoughts." 

It  was  through  her  influence  upon  him,  so  much 
more  wholesome  than  that  of  Madame  de  Gharri  ere, 
that  he  began  that  political  career  in  which  he 
labored  to  some  purpose  in  later  days  by  the  side 
of  men  like  General  Foy  and  Manuel  and  Lafay- 
ette. 

Three  years  after  his  pamphlet  of  1796,  Napoleon 
placed  him  on  the  "  Tribunat."  But  he  offended 
the  First  Consul  by  the  spirit  with  which  he  op- 
posed the  successive  steps  towards  the  assumption 
of  supreme  power  which  Napoleon  was  now  taking, 
and  he  was  dismissed  from  office  and  banished. 
Accompanying  Madame  de  Stael  to  Germany,  he 
published  in  1813  his  famous  pamphlet,  Sur  V Es- 
prit de  Conquete.  On  the  fall  of  Napoleon  in  1814, 
he  returned  to  Paris,  where  his  pen  was  busy  in 
producing  political  pamphlets.  In  these  he  de- 
scribed Napoleon  as  a  Genghis  Khan  and  his  rule  as 
a  u  government  of  Mamelukes." 

Yet,  when  the  Emperor  appeared  once  more  in 
Paris,  he  strangely  passed  over  to  his  side  and  be- 
came one  of  his  Councillors  of  State.  It  is  now 
pretty  well  ascertained — since  the  publication  of 
his  letters  to  that  woman  who  "understood  the  art 
oflistening" — that  this  piece  of  political  tergiver- 
sation was  due  to  his  mad  love  for  Madame  de 
Recamier,  to  whom  he  was  now  devoting  all  his 
powers  of  persuasion.  His  motive  was  simply  that 
he  might  still  live  in  Paris  and  be  near  her.  He 
could  have  had  little  real  hope  of  winning  her  af- 
fection by  a  course  so  repugnant  to  her  own  views, 


224  French  Literature. 

when  his  most  ardent  supplications  had  been 
unavailing  before,  though  he  had  then  been  writing 
in  the  interest  of  her  party.  But  he  seems  to  have 
been  in  despair  at  the  thought  of  being  parted  from 
her,  and  perhaps  he  may  have  believed  in  the 
charm  of  ambition  for  a  heart  like  hers. 

On  the  return  of  the  Bourbons,  he  wrote  so  able 
an  exculpation  of  his  conduct  to  Louis  XVIII.,  that 
he  was  readily  pardoned.  A  friend  remarking  to 
him  :  "  So,  your  memorial  has  succeeded!  It  has 
persuaded  the  King,"  "I  don't  wonder,"  said 
Constant ;  "it  almost  persuaded  my  own  self!  " 

In  1818,  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  witnessed  the 
appearance,  as  members,  of  three  men  greatly 
dreaded  by  the  favorers  of  absolute  government. 
These  were  Lafayette,  Manuel,  and  Constant. 
Later,  the  liberal  party  mustered  also  such  able 
men  as  Foy,  Lafntte,  and  Dupont-de-1'Eure ;  and, 
later  still,  Casimir  Perier. 

Constant's  eloquent  oratory,  his  keen  perception, 
his  pungent  wit,  and  his  brilliant  readiness  as  a 
pamphleteer,  made  him  a  valued  leader  of  the  lib- 
eral party.  He  died  shortly  after  the  revolution 
which  drove  Charles  X.  from  the  throne.  He  had 
been  twice  married,  having  been  divorced  from  his 
first  «wife.  His  whole  career  was  singularly  in- 
fluenced by  women. 

Among  his  works  are  his  Discours  Prononces  d 
la  Chambre  des  Deputes,  his  Cours  de  Politique  Con- 
stitutionelle,  his  Memoires  sur  les  Cent  Jours,  and  hia 
De  la  Religion  consideree  dans  sa  Source,  ses  Formes, 
et  ses  Developpements,  which  was  not  wholly  pub- 
lished until  after  his  death.  It  was  of  the  book  on 
religion  that  the  story  is  told  of  Constant's  answer- 
ing, when  a  friend  asked  him  how  he  could  recon- 
cile the  statements  of  his  latter  volumes  with  those 
of  his  first,  published  so  long  ago:  "There  is 
nothing  that  can  be  arranged  so  easily  as  facts." 
Tins  book,  which  is  in  five  volumes,  occupied  him 
at  intervals  for  thirty  years.  It  is  said  to  have 


The  Scientific  Period.  225 

t>een  planned  and  the  outline  of  it  written  on  the 
backs  of  packs  of  playing  cards.  As  a  supplement 
to  this,  he  wrote  his  Du  Polytheisme  Romain,  con- 
sideree  dans  ses  Rapports  avec  la  Philosophic 
Grecque  et  la  Religion  Chretienne. 

He  seems  to  have  had  the  same  faculty  of  tiring 
out  the  patience  of  his  English  friends,  as  his  be- 
loved paragon,  Madame  de  Stae'l ;  for  Thomas 
Moore  tells  an  amusing  story,  in  one  of  his  journals, 
of  Lord  Lansdowne's  escape  from  hearing  him  read 
a  novel,  by  adroitly  making  use  of  Madame  Con- 
stant's cat  to  cover  his  abrupt  departure. 

There  were  other  exiles,  besides  these  more  emi- 
nent ones,  who  did  literary  work  of  some  impor- 
tance. Among  these  were  the  brothers  De  Maistre 
and  General  Dumouriez. 

The  Comte  Joseph  De  Maistre  (1753-1821)  was 
born  at  Chambery,  of  a  noble  French  family  which 
had  settled  in  Savoy.  During  the  occupation  of 
Savoy  by  the  French  in  1792,  he  withdrew  from 
the  country.  "When  his  king  retired  to  the  island 
of  Sardinia,  the  only  part  of  his  dominions  where 
he  could  still  exercise  sovereignty,  De  Maistre  joined 
his  court  there,  and  was  sent  as  ambassadorto  Saint 
Petersburg  in  1803.  There  he  remained  until  1817, 
when  he  was  recalled  to  Turin,  to  fill  high  posts  at 
home.  His  later  years  were  spent  in  his  native 
country.  His  only  title  to  a  place  in  the  history  of 
French  literature  rests  on  the  fact  that  his  excellent 
works  were  written  in  French. 

His  first  work  was  his  Considerations  sur  la 
France,  which  appeared  in  1796.  Later,  he  pro- 
duced an  essay  Sur  le  Principe  Generateur  des  Con- 
stitutions Politiques,  his  work  Du  Pape,  that  De 
T  K'jlise  Gallicane,  and  the  work  by  which  he  is  now 
chiefly  known,  Les  Soirees  de  Saint -Petersbourg. 
This  last  work  is  full  of  elevated  thoughts  and  is 
written  with  great  spirit  and  liveliness.  It  has  done 
^•ooil  service  in  the  cause  of  the  religious  party;  but 
the  defect  of  De  Maistre,  as  an  influence  on  the 
15 


226  French  Literature. 

Catholic  side,  is  that  he  represents  the  most  arbi- 
trary and  inflexible  school  of  thought.  Toleration 
and  conciliation  are  ideas  beyond  his  sphere.  To 
the  works  already  mentioned,  must  be  added  a 
posthumous  publication,  Examen  de  la  Philosophic 
de  Bacon,  as  well  as  the  Lettres  et  Opuscules. 

His  brother,  Xavier  De  Maistre,  (1764-1852), 
who  was  also  born  at  Chambery,  took  refuge  in 
Russia  during  the  revolutionary  storm,  and  entered 
the  Russian  military  service,  in  which  he  rose  to 
the  rank  of  general.  Literature,  science,  and  the 
fine  arts  were,  however,  the  chief  occupations  of  his 
life.  He  was  successful  in  both  prose  and  poetry, 
was  a  fine  landscape  painter  and  an  able  chemist 
and  physician.  During  a  visit  to  Italy  in  1794, 
while  busying  himself  with  studies  in  water-color 
painting  and  India-ink  drawing,  he  began,  as  a  sort 
or  relaxation,  the  work  on  which  his  fame  chiefly 
rests,  his  Voyage  autour  de  ma  Chambre,  in  which 
the  thoughts  are  no  less  charming  than  the  style. 
He  also  wrote  Le  Lepreux  de  la  Vallee  d'Aoste,  Le 
Prisonnier  du  Caucase,  Prascovie  ou  la  Jeune  Sibe- 
rienne,  and  L' Expedition  nocturne  autour  de  ma 
Chambre.  He  died  at  Saint-Petersburg. 

General  Dumouriez  belongs  to  literature  only 
through  his  memoirs,  which  are  indeed  very  en- 
tertaining. 

Charles  Fran9ois  Dumouriez  (1799-1823)  was  born 
at  Cambrai,  served  in  Germany  during  the  Seven 
Years'  War  and  in  the  occupation  of  Corsica  by  the 
French;  held  the  office  of  commandant  of  Cher- 
bourg under  Louis  XVI.;  joined  the  Jacobin  Club 
during  the  revolutionary  period;  led  the  French 
revolutionary  army  in  its  earlier  campaigns; 
won  the  victory  of  Jemappes,  in  which  the  Austrians 
were  badly  defeated  ;  began  to  distrust  the  political 
heads  of  the  revolution  in  Paris ;  opened  negotia- 
tions with  the  Austrian  general;  tried  to  bring  the 
army  over  to  his  views  when  ordered  by  the  home 
government  to  return  to  Paris  and  stand  his  trial ; 


The  Scientific  Period.  227 

failed  in  this  effort,  and  escaped  to  the  ranks  of  the 
enemy.  The  Convention  set  a  price  of  300,000 
francs  on  his  head.  He  wandered  about  Europe, 
and  finally  settled  in  England,  where  he  died.  His 
later  years  were  employed  in  writing  his  Memoires. 

Dumont,  the  pupil  of  Bentham  after  having  been 
the  co-adjutor  of  Mirabeau,  also  spent  a  large  part 
of  his  life  in  England. 

Pierre  fitienne  Louis  Dumont  (1759-1825)  was 
born  at  Geneva,  became  a  Protestant  minister  in 
that  city ;  went  to  Saint  Petersburg  to  take  charge 
of  the  French  Protestant  church  there ;  passed  from 
there  to  England;  formed  a  strong  alliance  with 
the  Whigs ;  repaired  to  Paris  at  the  outbreak  of 
the  Eevolution;  became  very  intimate  with  Mira- 
beau and  wrote  the  ablest  speeches  delivered  by 
that  brilliant  declaimer;  returned  to  England  in 
1791 ;  attached  himself  to  the  famous  utilitarian 
philosopher  and  legislative  reformer,  Jeremy  Ben- 
tham, and  ultimately  translated  to  the  world  into  per- 
spicuous French  the  incoherent  and  involved  Eng- 
lish in  which  that  strong  thinker,  but  most  muddy 
writer,  put  his  ideas. 

Dumont  published  in  Geneva,  successively,  his 
Traite  de  Legislation  Civile  et  Penale,  his  Theorie 
des  Peines  et  des  Recompenses,  his  Tactique  des  As- 
semblees  Legislatives,  his  Preuves  Judiciaires  and 
his  Organisation  Judiciaire  et  Codification,  the  last 
appearing  after  his  death.  Another  posthumous 
work  was  his  Souvenirs  sur  Mirabeau  et  sur  les  deux 
premieres  Assemblies  Legislatives.  He  died  at 
Milan.  Macaulay,  in  reviewing  Dumont's  Recol- 
lections of  Mirabeau,  pays  him  a  handsome  trib- 
ute: 

"  M.  Dumont,"  he  writes,  "  was  one  of  those  persons, 
the  care  of  whose  fame  belongs  in  an  especial  manner  to 
mankind,  for  he  was  one  of  those  persons  who  have,  for 
the  sake  of  mankind,  neglected  the  care  of  their  own 
fame.  .  .  .  Possessed  of  talents  and  acquirements  which 
made  him  great,  he  wished  only  to  be  useful.  In  the 


228  French  Literature. 

prime  of  manhood,  at  the  very  time  of  life  at  which  amb* 
tious  men  are  most  ambitious,  lie  was  not  solicitous  to  pro- 
claim that  he  furnished  information,  arguments,  and 
eloquence  to  Mirabeau.  In  his  later  years  he  was  per- 
fectly willing  that  his  renown  should  merge  in  that  of 
Mr.  Bentham." 

The  literary  strength  ol'  France,  as  has  lieen  seen, 
lay  in  this  age  with  those  whom  Napoleon  could 
not  win  to  his  side.  Those  who  submitted  to  the 
Empire  could  point  to  no  such  literary  names  as 
Chateaubriand,  Madame  de  Stael,  and  the  De  Mais- 
tres,  among  their  number.  But  there  was  some 
literary  ability  enlisted  on  the  side  of  the  Empire 
also.  If  Napoleon  failed  to  propitiate  Madame  de 
Stael  and  Madame  de  Kecamier,  he  had  011  his 
pension  list  a  literary  woman  of  very  different 
character  in  Madame  de  Genlis.  If  he  could  not 
command  the  eloquence  of  Chateaubriand  and  the 
grace  of  the  De  Maistres,  he  had  the  science  of 
Champollion,  Cuvier,  Fourier,  De  Sacy,  Arago,  Gay- 
Lussac,  Fresnel,  and  Ampere,  and  the  dramatic 
skill  of  Andrieux,  Legouve,  Arnault,  fitienne,  Des- 
augiers,  and  Lemercier,  to  give  splendor  to  his 
reign. 

Stephanie  Felicite',  Comtesse  de  Genlis  (1746- 
1830)  was  born  at  Champ9^ri,  near  Autun,  in  Bur- 
gundy, of  an  old  but  impoverished  family.  Born 
Mademoiselle  Ducrest,  she  married  at  fifteen  the 
Cornte  de  Genlis,  and  became  a  member  of  the 
household  of  the  Duchesse  de  Chartres,  wife  of  that 
prince  who  was  afterwards  known  as  Eyalite.  Ap- 
pointed to  train  his  children,  she  wrote  a  number 
of  works  for  them,  Theatre  a  V usage  des  Jeunes 
Personnes,  Adele  et  Theodore  ou  Lettres  sur  V Edu- 
cation, Les  Veillees  du  Chateau  on,  GOUTS  de  Morale  a 
T usage  des  Enfants.  Like  that  scandal  of  the  house 
of  Orleans,  for  whom  she  compromised  her  reputa- 
tion, she  showed  sympathy  with  the  revolutionary 
party  in  the  early  stages  of  the  great  movement; 
but  she  was  soon  obliged  to  take  refuge  in  Belgium. 


The  Scientific  Period.  229 

Going  later  to  Switzerland,  and  from  there  to 
Altona  in  Germany,  she  wrote  during  her  stay  there 
a  romance  called  Les  Chevaliers  du  Gygne  ou  la 
Cour  de  Charlemagne,  and  a  pamphlet  entitled  Precis 
de  la  Conduite  de  Madame  de  Genlis  pendant  la 
Revolution. 

On  Napoleon's  becoming  Consul,  she  returned  to 
Paris,  and  accepted  a  pension.  Residing  in  Paris 
until  her  death,  she  produced  a  number  of  sketches 
of  fashionable  life  :  her  Observations  Critiques  pour 
servir  d  VHistoire  Litteraire  du  19me  si&cle,  her 
Dictionnaire  Critique  et  Raisonne  des  Etiquettes  de 
la  Cour,  des  Usages  du  Monde,  etc.,  and  her  Diners 
du  Baron  d'Holbach.  After  reaching  her  eightieth 
year,  she  composed  her  Memoires.  There  is  much 
malicious  gossip  in  all  these  later  works;  and  her 
"  moral "  stories,  once  so  popular,  are  as  far  from 
being  immaculate  as  was  her  private  character. 

Jurisprudence,  practical  science,  and  the  stage 
were  all  given  a  considerable  share  of  Napoleon's  at- 
tention. Assembling  the  chief  lawyers  of  the  land, 
with  Cambaceres  at  their  head,  he  committed  to 
them  the  great  undertaking  of  compiling  a  code 
for  France.  Their  deliberations  produced  the  Code 
Civil  des  Francais,  the  Code  de  Procedure,  the  Code 
Penal,  the  Code  d1  Instruction  Criminelle,  and  com- 
mercial and  militar}'-  codes.  Much  of  this  legis- 
lation is  still  in  force. 

Cuvier,  though  submitting  to  the  Empire,  was  in 
no  sense  a  partisan,  but  simply  an  eminent  scientist 
who  lived  calmly  through  that  period  and  worked 
on  undisturbed  after  the  fall  of  Napoleon. 

Georges  Chretien  Leopold  Dagobert,  Baron  Cuvier 
(1769-1832),  was  born  at  Mompelgard,  then  a  town 
of  Wurtemberg.  Early  evincing  a  passion  for 
natural  history,  educated  at  Stuttgart,  becoming 
private  tutor  in  the  family  of  the  Comte  d'He'ricy 
near  Fecamp  in  Normandy,  making  the  acquaint- 
ance of  Geoffrey  St.  Hilaire  and  other  eminent 
Parisian  scientists,  appointed  through  their  in- 


230  French  Literature. 

fluence  professor  in  the  ficole  Centrale  of  the  Pan- 
the'on,  becoming  soon  after  assistant  to  Mertrud  in 
the  study  of  comparative  anatomy  at  the  Jardin 
des  Plantes,  he  rose  to  distinction  as  a  master  in 
scientific  investigation.  Succeeding  Daubenton  in 
the  College  de  France,  and  becoming  Perpetual  Sec- 
retary of  the  Institute,  he  soon  stood  high  in  the 
Emperor's  favor,  and  was  commissioned  by  him  in 
1808  to  superintend  the  institution  of  academies  in 
the  countries  newly  acquired  by  France.  Later,  he 
became  a  member  of  the  Council  of  State. 

After  the  fall  of  Napoleon,  he  was  made  Chancel- 
lor of  the  University  of  Paris,  became  a  Cabinet 
Minister  under  Louis  XVIII.,  opposed,  under 
Charles  X.,  the  government  measures  for  restrict- 
ing the  freedom  of  the  press,  was  made  a  peer  of 
France  under  Louis  Philippe,  and  died  shortly  after 
being  named  Minister  of  the  Interior. 

His  scientific  work  consists  chiefly  in  creating 
the  modern  method  of  classification  in  zoology,  and 
in  raising  comparative  anatomy  to  the  dignity  of  a 
science.  His  chief  writings  were  his  Legons  d'Ana- 
tomie  Comparee,  Memoir e pour  servir  a  VHistoire  de 
VAnatomie  des  Mollusques,  Recherches  sur  les  Osse- 
ments  Fossiles  des  Quadruples,  Discours  sur  les 
Revolutions  de  la  Surf  ace  du  Globe  et  sur  les  Change- 
ments  qu'elles  ont  produits  dans  le  Rbgne  Animal, 
and  a  number  of  eulogies  delivered  by  him  on  scien- 
tific men.  Both  his  valuable  works  on  natural  his- 
tory and  his  eulogies  on  men  of  science  are  distin- 
guished by  the  precision,  clearness,  ease,  and  ele- 
gance of  their  style. 

But  his  genius  was  not  confined  to  that  branch, 
which  he  may  almost  be  said  to  have  created.  His 
retentive  memory,  profound  legislative  knowledge, 
and  judicial  cast  of  mind  enabled,  him  when  Presi- 
dent of  the  Council  of  State,  to  sum  up  the  deliber- 
ations of  his  colleagues  with  a  rapidity  and  succinct- 
ness which  often  amazed  them;  and  his  own  contri- 
butions to  legislation  were  exceedingly  valuable. 


The  Scientific  Period.  231 

"Once,"  says  De  Vericour,  "in  the  Chamber  of 
Peers,  when  a  military  question  was  mooted,  and 
confusion  ensued  in  the  debate,  Cuvier  rose  and 
solved  the  difficulty  with  the  ease  of  a  man  who 
had  passed  his  life  in  the  study  of  tactics." 

Nor  was  he  famous  only  as  a  student  of  nature 
and  a  masterly  writer  on  his  special  subjects. 
"  Nothing,"  says  De  Vericour,  "  could  surpass  the 
elaborate  eloquence  of  his  lectures.  Whether  lec- 
turing at  the  Jardin  des  Plantes  on  comparative 
anatomy,  at  the  College  de  France  on  the  history 
of  natural  philosophy,  or  at  the  Athenee  Royal  on 
subjects  selected  for  a  cultivated  audience,  accus- 
tomed to  hear  Chenier,  Ginguene,  Guizot,  and 
others,  he  was  always  profound  and  never  tedious. 
His  great  understanding  seemed  for  the  time  to  be 
communicated  to  his  hearers ;  and  he  led  them, 
without  fatigue,  to  the  comprehension  of  the  most 
elevated  and  recondite  views." 

There  were  two  Champollions.  The  elder,  who 
lived  to  edit  the  manuscripts  of  his  more  distin- 
guished brother,  is  known  as  Champollion-Figeac. 

Jean  Jacques  Champollion-Figeac  (1778-1867) 
was  eminent,  like  his  younger  brother,  as  an  ar- 
chaeologist. He  was  born  at  Figeac  in  the  depart- 
ment of  Lot.  Librarian  and  Professor  of  Greek 
Literature  at  Grenoble,  afterwards  Conservator  of 
MSS.  in  the  Imperial  Library  at  Paris,  and  then 
Librarian  under  Louis  Napoleon  of  the  palace  of 
Fontainebleau,  he  published  successively  Anti- 
quites  de  Grenoble,  Annales  des  Lagiades  et  figypte, 
Ancienne,  Les  Tournois  du  Roi  Rene,  and  Notice 
sur  les  Afanuscrits  Autographes  de  Champollion  le 
Jeune.  He  left  a  son,  who  has  worked  in  the  same 
field  of  research,  and  published  antiquarian  and 
philological  works. 

The  greater  Champollion,  the  famous  Egyptolo- 
gist, Jean  Francois  Champollion  (1790-1832),  was 
also  born  at  Figeac.  Early  interested  in  Egyptian 
antiquities  by  Baron  Fourier,  studying  in  Paris, 


282  French  Literature. 

made  Professor  of  History  in  the  Lyceum  at  Greno- 
ble, publishing  in  1811  his  figypte  sous  les  Phara- 
ons,  publishing  in  1821  his  essay,  Sur  V  ficriture 
Hieratique  des  Anciens  figyptiens,  he  was  still  some- 
what in  the  dark  as  to  the  true  principle  to  be  em- 
ployed in  deciphering  the  ancient  Egyptian  inscrip- 
tions, until  he  became  aware  of  the  views  of  that 
great  English  Egyptologist,  Dr.  Thomas  Young. 
Young  lacked  grace  and  perspicuity  as  a  writer,  but 
his  scientific  genius  was  amazing."  Admired  by 
Arago,  Gay-Lussac,  and  Fresnel  for  his  successful 
effort  to  establish  the  undulatory  theory  of  light,  he 
showed  the  same  lightning  glance  of  intuitive  per- 
ception when  he  turned  his  attention  to  the  great 
work  of  deciphering  the  Eosetta  Stone,  given  up  in 
despair  even  by  Silvestre  de  Sacy,  the  great  orient- 
alist Young  began  by  ascertaining  the  original 
identity  of  the  demotic,  enchorial,  or  abridged  char- 
acters with  the  sacred.  He  also  divined  the  fact 
that  phonetic  characters  were  often  interspersed 
with  the  symbolic.  To  these  discoveries  he  added 
the  important  one,  that  the  characters  enclosed  in 
an  oval  ring  were  proper  names.  The  Greek  text, 
which  had  been  easily  read  and  the  mutilated  parts 
supplied  by  Person  and  Heyne,  helped  at  this  point. 
The  phonetic  principle  was  discovered,  and  a  fair 
beginning  of  analysis  made. 

At  this  stage,  Champollion  took  up  Young's 
methods,  and  with  masterly  ingenuity  interpreted 
monument  after  monument,  and  constructed  a  more 
perfect  alphabet  than  Young's.  The  works  on 
Egypt,  after  he  had  fairly  got  on  the  right  track  of 
investigation,  were  his  celebrated  Lettre  a  Monsieur 
Dacier,  the  Precis  du  Systime  Hieroglyphique,  the 
Pantheon  jfigyptien,  the  Lettres  au  Due  de  Slacas, 
and  his  posthumous  Orammaire  figyptienne. 

Charles  X.  appointed  him  in  1828  to  accompany 
a  scientific  expedition  to  Egypt  and  on  his  return 
to  Paris  he  filled  the  new  chair  of  Egyptian  An- 


The  Scientific  Period.  233 

tiquities  in  the  College  de  France,  but  died  soon 
after  beginning  his  course  of  lectures. 

Antoine  Isaac,  Baron  Silvestre  de  Sacy  (1758- 
1838),  another  great  orientalist,  was  born  at  Paris. 
Early  in  life  he  began  his  oriental  studies  with  He- 
brew, to  which  he  added  in  the  course  of  time  a 
knowledge  of  Syriac,  Aramaic,  Samaritan,  Arabic, 
Persian,  and  Turkish,  besides  the  European  lan- 
guages, ancient  and  modern.  His  first  elaborate 
work  was  the  Annales  de  Mirkhond,  a  translation 
from  the  Persian.  He  refused  the  chair  offered  him 
in  1795  in  the  newly-founded  ficole  des  Langues 
Orientales,  being  unwilling  to  take  the  oaths  re- 
quired of  him.  But,  in  1803,  he  became  Professor 
of  Persian  in  the  College  de  France.  In  1808  he 
became  a  member  of  the  Corps  Le'gislatif.  Other 
high  positions  were  filled  by  him  after  the  fall  of 
Napoleon.  In  1822  he  founded,  with  Abel  Remu- 
sat,  the  Societe  Asiatique.  He  produced  a  prodig- 
ious number  of  essays,  memoirs,  and  pamphlets, 
besides  his  larger  works.  Of  these  the  chief  were 
his  Grammaire  Arabe ;  his  Chrestomathie  Arale ; 
his  Antholoyie  Grammaticale  Arabe;  his  Memoires 
sur  Diverses  Antiquities  de  la  Perse,  translation  of 
Abdollatis's  Egypt,  and  editions  of  various  oriental 
books ;  his  Memoires  sur  TEtat  actuel  des  Samari- 
tans ;  and  his  Expose  de  la  Reliyion  des  Druses.  His 
son  has  been  an  able  journalist. 

Jean  Pierre  Abel  Remusat,  (1788-1832),  the  dis- 
tinguished Chinese  scholar,  who  founded  with  De 
Sacy  the  Societe  Asiatique,  was  born  at  Paris.  His 
first  publication  was  an  essay  Sur  la  Lanyue  et  la 
Litterature  Chinoises.  While  serving  as  a  surgeon 
in  Napoleon's  military  hospitals,  he  produced  his, 
Uranographie  Monaole  and  his  discourse  Sur  la 
Nature  monosyllabique  attribute  Communement  a  la 
Langue  Chinoise.  On  the  Restoration,  he  became 
Professor  in  the  chair  of  Chinese  newly  founded  in 
the  College  de  France,  delivering  a  brilliant  inaugu- 
ral address,  which  De  Sacy  made  haste  to  bring 


234  French  Literature. 

before  the  journal -reading  public  in  the  form  of  an 
analysis  prepared  for  the  Moniteur. 

After  publishing  numerous  and  able  works  on 
his  special  studies,  Remusat  died  at  Paris  of  chol- 
era. His  chief  works  were  his  Recherches  sur  les 
Langues  Tartares,  Elements  de  la  Grammaire  Chin- 
oise,  Recherches  sur  V  Origine  et  la  Formation  de 
VEcriture  Chinoise,  Etude  historique  sur  la  Medecine 
des  ChinoiS)  Tableau  Complet  des  Connaissances  des 
Chinois  en  Histoire  Naturelle  (which,  however,  he 
did  not  complete),  Sur  la  Pierre  lu,  Notice  sur  la 
Chine  et  ses  Habitants,  Sur  V Extension  de  V Empire 
Chinois  en  Occident  depuis  le  Premier  Siecle  avant 
Jesus-  Christ  jusqu  'd  nos  Jours. 

Frangois  Arago  (1786-1853),  the  famous  scien- 
tist, was  born  at  Estagel,  near  Perpignan,  in  the  de- 
partment of  the  Eastern  Pyrenees.  He  early  made 
his  reputation  as  an  astronomer,  and  was  employed 
by  the  government,  with  other  eminent  men  of 
science,  to  measure  an  arc  of  the  meridian.  During 
his  solitary  residence  in  the  little  island  of  Ivica, 
while  engaged  in  extending  the  arc  from  Barcelona 
to  the  Balearic  Isles,  war  broke  out  between  France 
and  Spain,  and  he  had  a  series  of  trying  adventures, 
ending  with  his  capture  and  slavery  in  Algiers. 

On  his  return  to  France,  what  he  had  endured  in 
the  cause  of  science  won  him  unusual  honors  from 
the  Academy  of  Sciences.  In  1812,  he  began  his 
fascinating  lectures  on  astronomy,  which  drew  listen- 
ers of  all  classes.  Four  years  later,  he  established, 
along  with  Gay-Lussac,  iheAnnales  de  Chimie  et  de 
Physique;  and  the  two  scientists,  ignorant  at  that 
time  that  Dr.  Thomas  Young  had  already  done  it, 
proved  the  undulatory  theory  of  light.  A  year  or 
so  later,  Arago  published  his  Recueil  d1  Observations 
geodesiques,  astronomiques,  et  physiques.  His  next 
work  was  in  the  department  of  electro-magnetism, 
in  which  he  discovered  the  development  of  mag- 
netism by  rotation. 

Two  visits  made  to  England  gave  him  early  rec- 


The  Scientific  Period.  235 

ognition  abroad.  He  also  acquired  special  renown 
as  a  writer  by  the  eloges  which  he  delivered  in  his 
capacity  of  Perpetual  Secretary  of  the  Academy. 
These  biographical  sketches  have  great  literary 
merit.  He  also  took  part  in  the  political  move- 
ments of  his  time  ;  held  office  as  a  republican  min- 
ister ;  was  an  actor  in  the  revolutions  of  1830  and 
1848  ;  and  refused  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to 
Louis  Napoleon  on  the  establishment  of  the  Second 
Empire. 

His  chief  works  were  the  Astronomic  populaire 
and  the  Notices  scientifiques  et  biographiques,  in 
which  the  clear  style,  the  precise  and  rapid  de- 
scriptive power,  and  the  tact  in  putting  salient 
points  in  a  picturesque  grouping  have  contributed 
to  render  science  at  once  attractive  and  intelligible 
to  the  ordinary  reader. 

Louis  Joseph  Gay-Lussac  (1778-1850),  the  great 
chemist  and  physicist,  is  naturally  named  in  the 
same  breath  with  Arago.  He  was  born  at  St. 
Leonard,  in  the  department  of  Upper  Vienne.  He 
early  worked,  in  concert  with  Biot  and  Alexander 
von  Humboldt,  on  magnetic  and  chemical  prob- 
lems. In  1808,  he  announced  his  discovery  of  the 
law  of  volumes  for  gases.  By  Napoleon  he  was 
directed  to  give  special  attention  to  chemical  inves- 
tigations ;  and,  with  The'nard,  he  published  the  re- 
sults of  these  inquiries  in  the  Recherches  Physico- 
chimiqncs.  His  discoveries  belong  to  a  history  of 
chemical  progress,  and  need  not  detain  us  here. 
He  continued  his  scientific  work  uninterruptedly 
after  the  Restoration,  and  in  1839  was  made  a 
peer  of  France. 

Augustin  Jean  Fresnel  (1788-1827)  was  born  at 
Broglie,  in  the  department  of  Eure.  Receiving  a 
thorough  education  as  an  engineer,  he  was  employed 
by  the  government  in  that  capacity  until  1815.  He 
was  busy  during  the  Hundred  Days  in  making  in- 
vestigations into  the  polarization  of  light.  Una- 
ware of  what  Young  had  published  on  the  subject 


236  French  Literature. 

of  the    transmission    of  light,  he    too   proved  th< 
undulatory  theory,  refuting  the  corpuscular  theory 
advanced    by   Newton.     His   chief   work  was  the 
memoir  jointly  produced  by  himself  and  Arago  on 
this  subject. 

Fourier,  whom  Arago  succeeded  in  the  secre- 
taryship of  the  Academy  of  Sciences,  was  eminent 
as  a  mathematician.  He  must  be  carefully  distin- 
guished from  Fourier  the  Socialist. 

Jean  Baptiste  Joseph,  Baron  Fourier  (1768-1830), 
was  born  at  Auxerre.  After  completing  his  educa- 
tion in  military  schools,  he  accompanied  Napoleon  to 
Egypt,  and  wrote  the  fine  historical  introduction  to 
the  Description  de  VEyyple.  As  prefet  of  the  de- 
partment of  Isere,  he  drained  the  marshes  in  Bour- 
goin,  near  Lyon,  which  had  long  been  an  engineer- 
ing problem.  After  the  Eestoration,  he  devoted 
himself  wholly  to  scientific  research,  producing  the 
Theorie  Analytique  de  la  Chaleur,  the  Memoire  sur 
les  Temperatures  du  Globe  Terrestre  et  des  Espaces 
Planetaires,  and  a  work  published  after  his  death, 
entitled  Analyse  des  Equations  Determinees. 

Guillaume,  Baron  Dupuytren  (1777-1835),  famous 
as  surgeon  and  anatomist,  was  born  at  Pierre- 
Bumere,  in  Limousin.  He  was  not  only  a  skillful 
practitioner,  but  also  the  inventor  of  methods  of 
surgical  operation  and  of  valuable  instruments. 
He  wrote  little,  however,  his  chief  works  being  his 
Lemons  or  ales  de  Clinique  Chirurgicale  faites  a 
V  Hotel- Dieu,  and  his  Triate  Theorique  et  Pratique 
des  Blessures  par  Armes  de  Guerre. 

To  these  must  be  added  the  elder  Ampere. 

Andre  Marie  Ampere  (1775-1836),  born  at  Lyon, 
was  a  scientist  of  great  merit.  His  electro-dynamic 
theory  and  his  early  suggestion  of  the  identity  of 
electricity  with  magnetism  have  set  him  high  in 
the  roll  of  savants.  His  father  perished  under  the 
guillotine  in  1793.  Young  Ampere  devoted  him- 
self then  wholly  to  the  study  of  nature.  His  first 
work  was  an  essay  Sur  la  TJieorie  Matliematique  du 


The  Scientific  Period.  237 

a  calculation  of  the  chances  in  gaming.  The 
results  of  his  studies  in  electricity  appeared  in  his 
Recueil  cT  Observations  Electro-dynamiques,  and  his 
Theorie  des  Phenome'nes  Electro-dynamiques.  An 
account  of  his  son,  so  famous  as  a  philologist,  must 
be  reserved  for  another  part  of  this  sketch. 

The  Michaux,  father  and  son,  may  well  close 
this  list  of  scientists. 

Andre  Michaux  (1746-1802)  studied  under  the 
botanist  Jussieu  and  the  astronomer  Lemonnier. 
He  traveled  for  botanical  purposes  in  England,  in 
the  region  of  the  Pyrenees,  and,  later,  into  Persia. 
There  he  was  so  fortunate  as  to  cure  the  Shah  of  a 
dangerous  disease,  and  hence  the  two  years  he  spent 
in  Persia  were  spent  to  great  advantage.  Later 
still,  he  traveled  in  North  America  at  the  expense 
of  the  government;  but,  on  his  way  back,  was  ship- 
wrecked, and  lost  most  of  his  specimens.  The 
Directory  did  not  treat  him  well,  and  in  1800  he 
sailed  for  Madagascar,  still  intent  on  botanical  re- 
searches. There  he  died,  two  years  after.  His 
chief  works  were  Histoire  des  Chenes  de  TAmerique 
Septentrionale,  a  work  on  the  flora  of  North 
America. 

His  son,  Franyois  Andre  Michaux  (1770-1855), 
visited  this  country  three  times  on  governmental 
service.  His  chief  work  was  Histoire  des  Arbres 
fores  tiers  de  VAmerique  Septentrionale.  He  suc- 
ceeded in  introducing  a  number  of  our  forest  trees 
into  France. 

Another  botanist,  Ambroise  Marie  Francois  Jo- 
seph Beauvois  de  Palisot  (1752-1820),  ought  also  to 
be  named  here.  He  had  adventures  in  Africa  and  San 
Domingo.  His  works  were  Flore  d'Oicare  et  de 
Benin,  Insects  recueillies  en  Afrique  et  en  Amerique, 
and  Muscoloyie,  ou  Traite  sur  les  Mousses. 

Eminent  as  a  naturalist,  especially  in  ichthyol- 
ogy, was  Bernard  Germain  Etienne  de  Laville, 
Count  de  Lacepede  (1756-1825),  a  friend  of  Buf- 
fon's.  He  produced  works  on  the  natural  history 


238  French  Literature. 

of  Reptiles,  of  Fishes,  of  the  Cetacea,  and  of  Man. 
An  elegant  writer,  and  an  accomplished  musician, 
he  added  to  these  an  aesthetic  work,  La  Poetique  de 
la  Musique.  He  also  wrote  two  romances.  In  his 
habits  simple  and  domestic,  kind  and  amiable  in 
social  intercourse,  he  was  an  honor  to  the  great  body 
of  scientists  which  France  produced  in  this  age. 


Tlie  Socialists  and  their  Contemporaries.     239 


XVII. 

THE    SOCIALISTS    AND    THEIR    CONTEMPORARIES. 

IF  this  was  eminently  a  period  of  scientific  ad- 
vance, it  was  also  as  markedly  a  period  of  social- 
istic speculation,  based  upon  a  materialistic  philos- 
ophy. The  metaphysics  of  Condillac  and  Helvetius 
being  in  vogue,  that  school  of  thought  which  looks 
to  the  physiological  nature  of  man  as  accounting  for 
all  his  faculties  worked  out  steadily  its  logical  re- 
sults. The  chief  exponents  of  this  philosophy  were 
Cabanis  and  Volney. 

Pierre  Jean  Georges  Cabanis  (1757-1808)  was 
born  at  Cosnac,  in  the  department  of  the  Lower 
Charente.  A  liberal  in  politics  and  a  friend  of 
Mirabeau,  he  took*  a  prominent  part  in  the  revolu- 
tionary period,  but  abhorred  the  extremes  to 
which  his  party  went.  His  philosophical  work, 
written  from  the  standpoint  of  his  medical  studies, 
was  entitled  Rapports  du  Physique  et  du  Moral  de 
THornme.  He  traces  all  ideas  to  sensation,  and  re- 
gards the  brain  as  performing  its  functions  under 
identically  the  same  laws  as  those  which  regulate 
the  processe  of  digestion. 

Some  years  after  the  death  of  Cabanis,  his  friend, 
De.stutt  de  Tracy,  put  his  system  into  more  detailed 
metaphysical  form,  in  his  Elements  d1  Ideologic. 
Antoine  Louis  Claude  Destutt  de  Tracy,  Comte  de 
Tracy  (1754-1836),  was  a  sharer  in  the  councils  of 
the  revolutionary  party  in  1789,  served  the  Empire 
as  Senator,  and  opposed  re-actionary  measures  after 
the  Restoration.  Besides  his  metaphysical  work 
and  several  writings  on  political  economy,  he  pro- 
duced able  Commentaires  sur  'IS Esprit  des  Lois'  de 
Montesquieu,  in  1828, 


240  French  Literature. 

The  most  pronounced  of  the  materialists,  in  car- 
rying the  metaphysical  doctrine  to  its  legitimate 
results  in  the  field  of  religious  thought,  was  Volney, 
the  ardent  traveler  and  student  of  Eastern  tongues. 

Constantin  Fra^ois  Chassebceuf,  Comte  de 
Volney  (1757-1820),  was  born  at  Craon,  in  Anjou. 
He  assumed  the  name  of  Volney,  in  addition  to  the 
family  name  of  Chassebceuf,  after  reaching  man- 
hood, just  as  Arouet  had  assumed  that  of  Voltaire. 
After  attaining  a  thorough  education  and  studying 
successively  both  law  and  medicine,  he  went  travel- 
ing in  Egypt  and  Syria,  having  inherited  a  suffi- 
cient fortune  from  his  mother.  The  work  of 
Travels  which  he  published  on  his  return  gained 
him  great  reputation.  He  took  an  active  part  in 
the  great  Eevolution,  was  imprisoned  in  1793,  and 
only  set  free  by  the  fall  of  Robespierre.  Soon  after, 
he  published  his  famous  work,  Les  Ruines,  in  which 
he  set  forth  his  political  and  religious  creed,  the 
latter  being  a  disbelief  in  all  religions.  His  con- 
tribution to  the  materialistic  philosophy  was  his 
Catechisme,  which  teaches  that  morality  is  a  purely 
physical  science,  to  be  mastered  by  the  same  meth- 
ods as  the  other  natural  sciences.  He  was  made 
professor  in  the  ficole  Normale,  and  his  brilliant 
discourses  were  eagerly  listened  to  ;  but  that  school 
was  soon  suppressed,  and  he  came  over  to  this 
country,  returning  to  France,  however,  after  a  few 
years'  absence.  Napoleon  had  once  regarded  him 
with  favor ;  but,  as  he  opposed  the  Empire,  he  was 
always  during  its  existence  sneered  at  by  the 
Emperor  as  one  of  the  "ideologists,"  who,  whatever 
their  abilities,  were  impracticable.  He  was  forced 
to  keep  his  seat  in  the  Senate,  but  his  work  was 
mainly  literary,  most  of  his  writings,  indeed,  being 
purely  linguistic.  After  the  Restoration,  he  was 
called  to  the  House  of  Peers,  having  already  been 
made  Count  by  Napoleon. 

A  direct  outcome  of  these  ideas  in  philosophy 
was  that  school  of  socialistic  thought  which  ex- 


Vhe  Socialists  and  their  Contemporaries.     2-il 

pounded  its  views  in  the  doctrines  of  Saint-Simon 
and  Charles  Fourier. 

Claude  Henri,  Comte  de  Saint-Simon  (1760- 
1825),  was  born  at  Paris  of  a  family  that  boasted 
descent  from  Charlemagne  through  the  Counts  of 
Vermandois.  He  was  cursed  from  early  youth 
with  the  same  inordinate  pride  which  characterized 
his  singular  kinsman  of  an  earlier  generation,  the 
Due  de  Saint-Simon.  His  disciples  declare  that 
before  he  was  seventeen,  he  was  used  to  have  his 
valet  wake  him  up  every  morning  with  the  words : 
"  Arise,  my  Lord  Count,  you  have  great  things  to 
do."  He  received  a  fair  education,  D'Alembert 
being  one  of  his  teachers.  He  served  when  quite 
young  among  the  French  volunteers  under  "Wash- 
ington, reaching  the  rank  of  colonel,  and  distin- 
guishing himself  at  the  siege  of  Yorktown.  Made  a 
prisoner  while  on  his  way  home,  he  was  taken  to 
Jamaica,  where  he  remained  until  the  declaration 
of  peace.  Two  years  later,  he  resigned  from  the 
army,  traveled  in  Holland  and  Spain,  took  a  warm 
interest  in  various  industrial  schemes,  came  back  to 
France  on  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  and  voted 
for  the  abolition  of  titles  of  nobility,butin  the  main 
took  no  share  in  the  tumults  of  the  period. 

He  bought  up  confiscated  property,  began  to 
conceive  his  project  of  establishing  a  new  social 
system,  undertook  the  study  of  the  sciences  by 
listening  to  the  talk  of  learned  professors,  married, 
and  lavished  in  profuse  hospitalities  the  fortune  he 
had  made  by  speculation.  It  was  at  this  time  that 
he  is  said  to  have  visited  Madame  de  Stael  at 
Coppet  and  proposed  marriage  to  her,  having  first 
divorced  his  wife,  addressing  the  Baroness  in  these 
strange  words :  "  Madame,  you  are  the  most  extra- 
ordinary woman  in  the  world,  as  I  am  the  most 
extraordinary  man  in  it ;  we  should  without  doubt 
have  a  child  more  extraordinary  still."  But  the 
lady  treated  it  as  a  jest. 

Finding  himself  by  this  time  in  want  of  means, 
16 


242  French  Literature. 

he  published  at  Geneva  a  Lettre  d*un  Habitant  de 
Geneve  a  ses  Contemporains,  proposing  the  found- 
ing of  a  subscription  list  for  the  benefit  of  men  of 
genius.  As  this  brought  in  no  funds  and  he  began 
to  suffer  great  privations,  his  career  would  have 
soon  been  cut  short  by  starvation,  had  not  Diard,  an 
old  friend,  taken  pity  on  him  and  given  him  shelter 
in  his  house.  Here  he  produced  his  Introduction 
aux  Travaux  Scientifiques  du  Dix-nouvieme  Siecle. 
Diard's  death  plunged  him  again  into  misery,  and 
his  sufferings  forced  him  to  write  to  Cuvier  and 
others:  "I  am  dying  of  hunger.  For  a  fortnight 
my  only  fare  has  been  bread  and  water.  I  work 
without  fire,  and  I  have  had  to  part  with  even  my 
clothes  to  get  means  to  continue  my  work." 

It  is  not  easy  to  get  at  the  cause  of  his  failure  to 
take  advantage  of  the  great  name  he  bore,  when 
the  Kestoration  had  brought  back  the  prestige  of 
the  old  nobility.  His  disciples  claim  that  he 
scorned  such  vulgar  ambition.  Others  suppose 
that  he  had  offended  too  deeply  to  win  forgiveness. 

In  1819,  he  put  forth  a  pamphlet  called  Parabole, 
reflecting  bitterly  on  the  aristocracy.  For  this  he 
was  indicted  and  narrowly  escaped  severe  punish- 
ment. But  he  had  already  won  admirers  and 
followers.  Augustin  Thierry  assisted  him  in  pre- 
paring his  Reorganisation  de  la  Societe  Europeenne. 
His  disciples  also  helped  him  in  his  IS  Industrie  ou 
Discussions  Politiques,  Morales,  et  Philosophiques, 
the  third  volume  being  by  Comte.  To  these  suc- 
ceeded Le  Systtme  Industriel  and  Le  Catechisme 
Industriel.  His  publications  having  exhausted  his 
finances,  he  tried  to  commit  suicide  by  firing  a 
pistol  at  his  head.  He  lost  an  eye,  but  recovered 
life  and  reason.  He  now  wrote  his  most  remark- 
able book,  Le  Nouveau  Christianisme.  In  this 
work,  he  claims  that  all  his  ideas  on  progressive 
social  development  are  based  on  the  words  of  Jesus 
Christ,  that  Christianity  has  been  cramped  and 
distorted  by  rigid  dogmas  and  ecclesiastical  organ- 


The  Socialists  and  their   Contemporaries.     243 

izations,  that  Protestantism  and  Catholicism  alike 
have  gone  astray  from  the  purpose  of  the  Founder, 
that  the  great  duty  of  humanity  is  to  ameliorate 
the  condition  of  that  vast  majority — the  poor. 

After  finishing  this  work,  Saiut-Sirnon  eank  into 
a  languor,  and  died.  Rodrigues,  Comte,  and  others 
of  his  disciples  were  around  him  in  his  last  mo- 
ments, and  reported  his  dying  utterances  with  the 
same  spirit  of  reverence  with  which  Plato  and 
Xenophon  recorded  those  of  Socrates.  Soon  after 
his  death,  the  periodical  he  had  hoped  to  establish, 
Le  Pro'lucteur,  appeared.  Olinde  Rodrigues  was 
editor ;  the  contributors  were  Bazard,  Enfantin, 
Cerclet,  Buchez,  Michel  Cavalier,  Carnot,  Fournel, 
Barroult,  Chasles,  Duveyrier,  Annand  Carrel, 
Reynaud,  Pierre  Leroux,  Saint-Cheron,  Gueroult, 
and  Charton.  It  died  soon,  however,  for  want  of 
funds. 

Some  of  the  leading  Saint-Simonians  then  began 
to  put  forth  the  new  doctrines  in  lectures  They 
proposed  the  adoption  of  a  system  of  rewards  as  a 
reform  in  jurisprudence,  the  abolition  of  the  death- 
pena'lty  and  the  substitution  of  reformatory  dis- 
cipline, the  adoption  of  civil-service  reform,  the 
enfranchisement  of  women,  the  abolition  of  mar- 
riage, and  the  eventual  division  of  property  according 
to  the  share  of  each  man  or  woman  in  promoting 
social  welfare. 

All  agitation,  though  its  aim  be  destruction  of 
existing  organizations,  tends  to  produce  organiza- 
tion of  its  own.  The  Saint-Simonians  soon  or- 
ganized a  hierarchy,  claiming  that  they  were  restor- 
ing the  true  religion  and  that  Saint-Simon  was  a 
veritable  prophet.  They  even  adopted  a  peculiar 
costume. 

When  the  Revolution  of  1830  came,  Bazard  and 
Enfantin,  the  chiefs  of  the  new  Church,  had  all 
Paris  placarded  with  a  scheme  for  the  salvation  and 
regeneration  of  France.  Members  of  the  govern- 
ment, however,  denounce' I  their  sect  as  advocates 


244  French  Literature. 

for  community  of  property  and  community  of 
women.  Proselytes  to  the  new  doctrine  meantime 
became  numerous.  The  prospects  of  the  society 
seemed  brighter  than  ever,  when  discord  came,  at 
the  first  blush  of  prosperity,  to  blight  all  the  fair 
promise.  Bazard  died  broken-hearted.  Enfantin 
estranged  many  of  the  best  men  in  the  society. 
The  funds  were  squandered  in  the  great  "  Festival 
of  Sanctification."  Government  prosecuted  the 
chiefs,  and  troops  were  sent  to  break  up  their 
meetings  and  shut  up  their  churches  and  schools. 
Enfantin  retired  to  his  house  at  Menilmontant  with 
forty  disciples,  put  forth  from  that  retreat  his 
Catechisme  et  Gendse  du  Saint-  Simonisme,  admitted 
the  public  to  witness  the  worship  of  the  sect,  and 
drew  down  once  more  the  interference  of  the  police. 
After  a  short  imprisonment,  he  went  to  Egypt  with 
some  few  followers.  Returning  in  the  course  of 
two  years,  he  settled  in  the  neighborhood  of  Lyon. 
Appointed  in  his  later  years  a  member  of  the  Scien- 
tific Commission  for  Algiers,  he  wrote  on  his  return 
from  Africa  a  sensible  book,  called  Colonisation  de 
TAlyerie.  He  also  appeared  before  the  public  after 
the  Revolution  of  1848,  editing  a  paper  in  which 
he  again  brought  forward  Saint-Simonian  doc- 


Barthe'lemy  Prosper  Enfantin  (179  6-1864)  had 
fought,  when  a  mere  boy,  against  the  allies  on  the 
heights  of  Montmartre  and  St.  Chaumont,  and  had 
on  this  account  been  expelled  from  the  ficole 
Poly  technique.  His  chief  works  were  Doctrine  d( 
Saint-Simon  (written  with  others),  Traite  de  V  Econ- 
omic Politique,La  Religion  Saint-  Simonienne,  Moral, 
Le  Livre  Nonveau,  Correspondance  Philosophique 
et  Religieuse,  Correspondance  Politique,  and  La  Vie 
Eternelle,  Passee,  Presente,  Future. 

Charles  Fourier  was  before  the  public  in  advance 
of  Saint-Simon.  But  it  was  not  until  the  Saint- 
Simonians  had  attracted  the  attention  of  the  public, 
that  Fourier's  speculations  excited  remark. 


The  Socialists  and  their  Contemporaries.    245 

Fran9ois  Marie  Charles  Fourier  (1772-1837)  was 
oorn  at  Besangon.  His  father,  who  was  a  merchant, 
gave  him  a  good  education.  He  then  lived,  as  mer- 
chant's clerk,  at  Lyon,  Rouen,  Marseille,  and  Bor- 
deaux. He  also  traveled  on  commercial  business  in 
Holland  and  Germany.  Being  a  close  observer  and 
having  a  remarkable  memory,  he  acquired  a  vast 
amount  of  useful  knowledge  during  these  journeys. 
The  fine  fortune  left  him  by  his  father  was  lost  in 
the  Revolution.  He  was  forced  into  two  year's  ser- 
vice in  the  cavalry,  which  bad  health  released  him 
from,  at  the  end  of  that  time.  Going  into  business 
again,  he  employed  his  leisure  in  studying  social 
problems. 

His  books,  developing  his  system,  were  Theor'ie 
des  Quatre  Mouvements  et  des  Destinees  Generales, 
Traite  d1  Association  Domestique  Ayricole,  Le  Nou* 
veau  Monde  Industrial  et  Societaire,  Pidyes  et  Char- 
latanisme  des  Deux  Sectes  Saint-Simon  et  Owen, 
promettant  V association  et  progre~s,  and  La  Famse  In- 
dustrie, Morcelee  Repugnante,  MensonyZre,  et  I  An- 
tidote, T  Industrie  Naturelle,  Combinee,  Attrayante, 
Veridique,  donnant  Quadruple  Produit. 

Fourier  based  his  system  upon  a  wild  theory  of 
the  constitution  of  the  universe,  which  need  not  be 
stated  here,  as  he  himself  bitterly  complained  that 
these  speculative  notions  were  selected  for  ridicule, 
while  his  main  scheme  was  ignored  by  the  critics. 
This,  stated  in  his  own  words,  was  a  practical  sys- 
tem embodying  "  the  art  of  organizing  a  well-com- 
bined industry,  from  which  will  result  morality, 
harmony  amongst  the  three  classes^the  rich,  the 
poor,  and  the  middle  class — the  impossibility  of 
revolutions,  universal  unity,  and  perfectibility."  He 
proposed  an  equal  division  of  men,  the  smallest  sub- 
division being  a  group,  comprising  from  twelve  to 
sixteen  families:  from  twenty-four  to  thirty-two  of 
these  groups  were  to  constitute  a  phalanx.  Each 
phalanx,  comprising  about  1800  people,  was  to  live 
in  a  building  called  a  Phalanstery,  in  the  middle  of 


246  French  Literature. 

a  large  and  highly  cultivated  domain,  supplied  with, 
workshops,  studios,  and  all  the  appliances  requisite 
for  industr}',  art,  comfort,  and  amusement.  His  cal- 
culation was  that  such  a  Phalanstery  would  not 
require  greater  expense  than  four  hundred  cottages 
in  an  ordinary  French  parish  of  the  same  number 
of  inhabitants,  and  that  a  well-built  Phalanstery 
would  outlast  such  cottages  six  or  seven  times.  The 
institution  was  to  be  a  grand  co-operative  concern, 
thus  minimizing  expenses.  Distribution  was  to  be 
regulated  according  to  the  capital  brought  into  the 
common  stock  and  to  the  labor  performed.  So 
many  Phalansteries  were  to  form  a  city,  and  these 
again  one  great  metropolis;  the  Bosphorus  being  in 
his  view  the  most  convenient  site  for  this  metrop- 
olis. There  were  also  to  be  special  corporations, 
called  Industrial  Armies,  commanded  by  those  ex- 
celling in  each  branch  of  industry,  art,  or  science, 
and  destined  to  march  to  each  point  where  their 
services  might  be  immediately  required,  whether  to 
build,  to  dig  canals,  to  drain  lands,  or  for  any  other 
great  work  needing  concentrated  action.  The  chief  of 
the  whole  federal  body  was  to  be  styled  "  Omniarch." 
Fourier's  idea,  it  will  be  seen,  is  that  of  compre- 
hending all  humanity  in  one  great  industrial  asso- 
ciation, the  members  of  which  are  all  to  hold  shares 
in  the  common  stock — a  monster  co-operative  so- 
ciety, in  short. 

Fourier's  views  were  taken  up  after  his  death, 
and  attained  more  importance  eventually  than  any 
other  socialist  system.  La  Phalange,  a  periodical 
edited  by  Victor  Considerant,  author  of  La  Destinee 
Sociale,  became  the  exponent  of  Fourierism.  With 
the  financial  aid  of  a  young  Englishman,  named 
Young,  Considerant  established  in  1882  a  Phalan- 
stery on  the  model  planned  by  his  master  ;  but  the 
experiment  failed.  Later  in  life,  he  established  a 
similar  community  in  Texas ;  but  this  also  proved 
abortive. 

Both    the   Saint-Si monians   and  the  Fourierites 


The  Socialists  and  their   Contemporaries.    247 

have  passed  away.  But  the  great  question  of  the 
organization  of  labor  remains  as  difficult  to  settle  as 
ever.  The  worst  forms  of  discontent  with  the  rela- 
tions subsisting  between  capital  and  labor  have  been 
the  crude  and  brutal  Communism  and  Nihilism  of 
recent  times.  These,  however,  can  hardly  be  said 
to  have  a  literature. 

Having  now  treated  of  those  philosophical  and 
socialist  elements  which  sprung  up  in  the  soil  of 
the  French  Revolution  and  produced  literary  fruit 
either  during  the  Empire  or  soon  after,  I  find  it 
fitting  to  proceed  to  the  stage  "as  it  was  under 
Napoleon. 

As  has  been  said,  the  Emperor  favored  the  stage, 
at  least  so  far  as  the  ancient  tragedy  was  concerned. 
Plays  on  the  classic  model  and  on  classic  subjects 
were  the  order  of  the  day ;  and  they  had  the  great 
advantage  of  being  acted  by  that  great  tragedian, 
Talma,  ably  assisted  by  Mademoiselle  Duchesnois. 
The  play-writers  of  this  period  were  Andrieux, 
Raynouard,  Legouve,  Arnault,  fitienne,  Desaugiers, 
and  Lemercier. 

Fran9ois  Guillaume  Jean  Stanislas  Andrieux 
(1759-1833)  was  born  at  Strasbourg.  After  being 
a  short  time  in  public  life,  he  was  removed  by 
Napoleon  from  the  presidency  of  the  Tribunal,  and 
then  devoted  himself  to  literature.  His  chief  pro- 
ductions were  the  comedies,  Les  fitourdis,  Anaxi- 
mandre,  Molibre  avec.ses  Amis,  Le  Vieux  Fat,  the 
tragedy  of  Brutus,  and  some  pretty  tales  in  verse, 
of  which  Le  Afeunier  de  Sans-Soiici  is  the  best.  As 
Professor  of  Literature  in  the  College  de  France, 
he  charmed  his  classes  by  his  easy,  familiar  style 
of  lecturing.  Some  of  his  lectures  were  published 
under  the  title  of  La  Philosophic  des  Belles  Lettres. 
As  Perpetual  Secretary  of  the  Academy,  he  was  an 
active  worker  in  the  preparation  of  its  famous 
Dictionary. 

Fran9ois  Juste  Marie  Raynouard  (1761-1836), 
born  at  Brignoles  in  Provence,  attained  greater 


248  French  Literature. 

fame  as  a  philologist  than  as  a  dramatic  writer. 
After  practising  law  with  great  success ;  escaping 
during  the  Revolutionary  troubles  the  fate  of  his 
friends,  the  Girondists,  by  being  forgotten  in  prison  ; 
and,  on  the  fall  of  Robespierre  and  his  own  release 
from  confinement,  resuming  the  practice  of  his  pro- 
fession, he  fir.ally  retired  from  it  with  a  competency 
secured,  and,  betaking  himself  to  Paris,  gave  him- 
self up  to  literary  work.  Besides  a  poem  called 
Socrate  au  Temple  d1  Aglaure,  lie  produced  a  number 
of  plays.  These  were  Eleonore  de  Bavibre,  Les 
Templiers,  Sctpio,  Les  $tats  de  Blois,  Don  Carlos, 
Charles  1.,  Debora,  and  Jeanne  $  Arc  a  Orleans.  Of 
these,  Les  Templiers  was  the  most  successful. 

Before  the  Restoration,  he  had  begun  to  take  an 
absorbing  interest  in  the  Provencal  language  and 
the  old  literature  of  his  native  country  ;  and  to  the 
study  of  these  he  devoted  himself  through  the  rest 
of  his  life.  His  researches  have  proved  very  valu- 
able to  linguists,  however  subsequent  investigation 
has  been  forced  to  modify  and  even  wholly  set 
aside  some  of  his  theories.  His  chief  linguistic 
works  were  Elements  de  la  Orammaire  Romane, 
Choix  de  Poesies  Originales  des  Troubadours,  Oram- 
maire comparee  des  Langues  de  VEurope  Latine 
dans  leur  Rapports  avec  la  Langue  des  Troubadours, 
Observations  Philologiques  sur  le  Roman  du  Rou, 
Influence  de  la  Langue  Romane,  Lexique  Roman 
ou  Dictionnaire  de  la  Langue  des  Troubadours. 

Of  Marie  Joseph  de  Chenier  I  have  already  given 
an  account,  in  connection  with  the  sketch  of  his 
brother  Andre,  who  perished  in  the  Revolution. 
Here,  it  need  only  be  mentioned  that  he  takes  rank 
among  the  most  distinguished  of  the  play-writers 
of  the  period. 

Gabriel  Marie  Jean  Baptiste  Legouve'  (1764- 
1812),  born  at  Paris,  devoted  himself  wholly  to 
literary  pursuits.  Among  his  poems,  La  Sepulture, 
Les  Souvenirs,  La  Melancolie,  and  La  Merite  des 
Ferames,  the  last  is  a  graceful  tribute  to  the  ex- 


The  Socialists  and  their   Contemporaries.    249 

cellences  of  the  sweeter  part  of  humanity.  His 
successful  tragedies  were  La  Mort  d'Abel,  Epicharis 
et  Neron,  and  La  Mort  de  Henri  IV. 

Antoine  Vincent  Arnault  (1766-1834)  produced 
a  great  number  of  tragedies,  the  best  known  of 
which  are  Marius  a  Minturnes,  Les  Veniticns,  and 
Germanicus.  His  residence  in  Venice  on  diplo- 
matic business  helped  him  to  make  his  "  Venetians" 
effective.  Napoleon  was  greatly  pleased  with  this 
play,  and  his  favor  was  prejudicial  to  Arnault  when 
the  Bourbons  came  back.  Arnault  also  wrote  in 
prose  Vie  Politique  et  Militaire  de  Napoleon,  and 
Les  Memoires  d'un  Sexayenaire.  He  was  one  of  the 
contributors  to  the  Nouvelle  Bioyraphie  des  Con- 
temporains.  His  Fables  have  some  merit  from  their 
vivacity  and  mischievous  wit. 

Charles  Guillaime  lltienne  (1770-1845),  born 
in  the  village  of  Chamouilly,  came  young  to  Paris, 
and  plunged  at  once  into  literary  efforts.  A  lively 
comedy,  Brueys  et  Palaprat,  brought  him  immedi- 
ate reputation.  He  was  censor  of  the  press  under 
Napoleon,  but,  losing  his  post  at  the  Restoration, 
became  an  opposition  journalist.  After  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1830,  he  was  made  a  peer  of  France.  Of 
his  many  dramatic  works,  the  finest  are  Les  Deux 
Gendres,  one  of  the  best  comedies  of  the  Empire, 
and  Joconde,  a  work  that  was  produced  for  the  Op- 
e*ra  Comique. 

Marc-Antoine  Desaugiers  (1772-1827)  was  a 
joint-producer,  with  many  writers  for  the  stage,  of 
comedies,  operas,  and  vaudevilles ;  but  he  is  best 
known  by  his  songs.  They  have  a  gaiety  so  fresh 
and  companionable,  so  much  dash,  and  so  hearty  a 
swing,  that  they  have  always  been  popular.  His 
being  like  Tom  Moore,  in  singing  as  well  as  writing 
his  songs,  gave  the  same  kind  of  personal  charm  to 
his  society.  He  warmly  befriended  Beranger,  his 
country's  greatest  song- writer,  in  the  beginning  of 
the  latter's  career. 

Nepomucene    Lemercier  (1772-1840)  was  born 


250  French  Literature. 

at  Paris.  His  chief  plays  were  the  tragedies  of 
Agamemnon  and  Fredegonde  et  Brunehaut,  the 
dramas  of  Richelieu  and  Pinto,  ou  la  Journee  des 
Dupes,  and  some  comedies  which  had  but  slight 
success.  A  very  remarkable  work  of  his  was  Ins 
satirical  poem  called  La  Panhypocrisiaae.  He  also 
put  forth  a  Cours  de  Literature  Dramatique,  which 
gives  evidence  of  fine  powers  of  observation,  as 
well  as  of  a  delicacy  of  taste  far  from  being  so 
perceptible  in  his  dramatic  works. 

I  have  mentioned,  above,  his  dramas  separately 
from  his  tragedies  ;  and  this  is  a  fitting  place  to  ex- 
plain what  the  French  mean  by  the  Drame  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  Tragedie.  The  whole  differ- 
ence may  perhaps  be  best  summed  up  in  the  state- 
ment that  the  Tragedie  is  the  play  of  the  classical 
taste  and  is  subject  to  the  rules  of  classic  art ; 
while  the  Drame  is  the  play  of  the  romantic  school, 
disregarding  the  unities  and  combining  at  will  the 
elements  of  comedy  with  those  of  tragedy. 

The  other  literary  men  of  this  period,  not  hitherto 
mentioned,  were  the  historians  Daru,  Michaud,  and 
Sismondi;  the  poets,  Fontanes,  Viennet,  and 
Millevoye ;  and  some  of  the  members  of  the  Bona- 
parte family,  including  Napoleon  himself. 

Pierre  Antoine  Noel  Bruno,  Comte  Daru  (1767- 
1829)  was  born  at  Montpellier.  He  entered  the 
army  while  still  a  mere  boy.  Hs  was  one  of  the 
many  prisoners  of  the  Reign  of  Terror  whom  the 
fall  of  Robespierre  released.  During  his  imprison- 
ment he  employed  himself  in  translating  Horace, 
subsequently  publishing  this  Traduction  en  Vers 
des  Poesies  d'Horace.  At  the  same  time  appeared 
his  Cleopedie,  on  la  Theorie  des  Reputations  en 
Litterature.  Napoleon  held  him  in  high  favor,  and 
employed  him  as  one  of  his  most  trusted  ministers. 
After  the  Restoration,  he  devoted  himself  wholly 
to  literary  work.  His  chief  productions  were  the 
Histoire  de  la  Repiiblique  de  Venise,  the  Histoire  de 
Bretagne,  his  poetical  Discours  sur  les  Facultes 


The  Socialists  and  their   Contemporaries.    251 

Oe  I'Homme.  his  Discours  sur  la  Liberte  de  la  Presse, 
his  Elopes,  and  a  criticism  of  Chateaubriand's 
"  Genius  of  Christianity." 

Count  Daru's  great  work  was  his  History  of 
Venice,  in  seven  volumes.  He  had  peculiar  facilities 
for  making  this  a  thorough  work.  The  removal 
of  the  republic's  archives  by  the  French  revolution- 
ary government  to  Paris,  and  Daru's  position  as 
Napoleon's  favored  minister,  enabled  him  to  make 
use  of  abundant  materials  which  had  hitherto  been 
carefully  kept  concealed  from  the  world.  De 
Vericour  gives  this  history  very  high  praise  for 
accuracy  and  judgment,  though  he  remarks  that 
the  style  lacks  animation. 

Joseph  Michaud  (1767-1839)  was  born  in  Savoy, 
and  wrote  in  early  life  a  Voyage  au  Mont  Blanc. 
Finding  his  way  to  Paris  through  the  influence  of 
the  Comtesse  de  Eeauharnais,  he  there  became  an 
associate  of  the  revolutionary  leaders;  but,  remain- 
ing at  heart  a  conservative,  lie  ventured  after  the 
fiill  of  Eobespierre  to  advocate  in  La  Quotidienne 
the  restoration  of  the  monarchy.  Condemned  first 
to  death  and  then  to  exile  instead,  he  set  out  to 
find  a  refuge  in  the  Jura  mountains.  Eeturning  to 
Paris  in  1799,  he  published  some  years  later  his 
Printemps  d'un  Proscrit,  a  poem  which  has  some 
fine  passages.  In  partnership  with  a  younger 
brother,  who  was  a  printer,  he  undertook  next  the 
Biographic  Moderne,  which  comprised  sketches  of 
the  revolutionary  leaders.  On  the  return  of  the 
Bourbons,  he  sided  heartily  with  the  government 
party,  published  Le  dernier  Kegne  de  Bonaparte^ 
resumed  the  editorship  of  La  Quotidienne,  and 
began  to  write  his  great  work,  L'Histoire  des 
Croisades. 

His  friend,  Madame  Cottin,  who  was  then  writing 
her  novel  of  the  Crusading  days,  Malek  Adhel,  having 
begged  him  to  look  up  some  authorities  for  her,  he 
became  interested  in  the  subject,  and  his  study  of 
the  period  ended  in  his  seriously  setting  to  work 


252  French  Literature. 

at  a  history  of  it.  De  Vericour  gives  him  credit 
for  a  graceful,  fluent,  and  figurative  style,  but 
charges  him  with  great  lack  of  perspicuity  and 
accuracy. 

Michaud's  other  works  were  his  Correspondance 
d1  Orient,  his  Histoire  de  V Empire  de  Mysore,  a  Col- 
lection de  Memoires  sur  V Histoire  de  France,  and  the 
Biibliotheque  des  Croisades. 

Jean  Charles  Leonard  Simonde  de  Sismondi 
(1773-1842)  was  born,  of  a  house  sprung  from 
Italian  ancestry,  at  Geneva,  in  Switzerland.  His 
education  was  still  in  progress  when  the  necessities 
of  his  parents  forced  him  to  enter  a  counting-house 
at  Lyon.  He  did  his  work  fairly,  and  in  after-life 
regarded  this  practical  training  as  of  great  value  to 
him.  The  Revolution  came,  and  he  had  to  return 
to  Geneva.  But  the  family  soon  ceased  to  feel  safe 
there,  and  took  refuge  in  England,  soon  however  to 
return.  Still  feeling  uneasy,  they  bought  a  little 
farm  near  Pescia,  in  Tuscany.  Here  Sismondi  be- 
gan to  prepare  materials  for  his  History  of  the  Italian 
Republics.  Meanwhile,  he  had  seen  something  of 
the  society  which  gathered  around  Madame  de 
Stae'l,  and  had  been  classed  by  Napoleon  as  one  of 
those  "  ideologists  "  whom  he  so  constantly  sneered 
at. 

Before  his  history  was  finished,  he  put  forth  a 
work  on  political  economy  entitled  De  la  Richesse 
commerciale.  His  Histoire  des  Republiques  itali- 
ennes,  in  sixteen  volumes,  when  it  did  appear,  estab- 
lished his  reputation.  This  was  confirmed  by  his 
Histoire  de  la  Litterature  du  Midi  de  V  Europe,  and 
his  greatest  work,  the  Histoire  des  Frangais.  De 
Vericour  eulogizes  his  learning,  research,  and 
penetration ;  the  purity  of  his  style ;  and  the 
picturesqueness  with  which  he  has  succeeded  in  in- 
vesting the  scenes  of  his  first  subject,  the  Italian 
city-commonwealths.  But  he  charges  him  with 
inequality  of  style  and  with  the  obtrusion  upon  the 
narrative  of  philosophical  reflections  which  break 


The  Socialists  and  their   Contemporaries.    253 

the  spell  of  illusion  for  the  reader  and  chill  his  in- 
terest. Guizot  also,  in  his  History  of  Civilization, 
while  criticising  Sismondi's  History  of  the  French 
closely,  gives  it  very  high  praise. 

We  turn  now  to  the  poets.  Louis,  Marquis  de 
Fontanes  (1757-1821),  sprung  from  an  old  Huguenot 
family  of  Languedoc,  was  born  at  Niort.  He  early 
won  at  Paris  a  reputation  for  elegant  and  graceful 
poetry,  publishing  there,  before  the  Eevolution,  Le 
Cri  de  Mon  Coeur,  Le  Verger,  and  translations  from 
English  poetry.  He  took  the  popular  side  when 
the  great  crash  came,  became  famous  as  an  orator, 
warmly  admired  Napoleon,  and  kept  his  favor  to 
the  last.  After  the  Restoration,  he  was  raised  to 
the  peerage  by  Louis  XVIII. 

Jean  Louis  Guillaume  Yiennet  was  born  at 
Beziers  in  1777.  Intended  for  a  priest,  he  became 
a  soldier  on  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution,  and 
after  the  Restoration  betook  himself  to  literature. 
He  was  successful  £S  journalist,  satirist,  dramatist, 
and  romancer.  Among  his  works  may  be  named 
La  Philippide,  his  Promenade  philosophique  au 
Cimetiere  du  Pere  La  Chaise,  his  Satires,  his 
Epitres,  his  play  of  Michel  Bremond,  and  his 
Fables. 

Charles  Hubert  Millevoye (1780-1816)  attempted 
every  branch  of  poetry,  but  did  not  succeed  in 
works  of  the  highest  order.  In  little  poems  of 
pure  sentiment  he  proved  himself  a  poetic  artist  of 
exquisite  charm  and  grace.  La  Chute  des  Feuilles 
is  considered  his  finest  poem.  Among  the  others, 
in  which  his  chaste  and  melancholy  sweetness  show 
to  best  advantage,  are  L' Amour  maternel,  UAn- 
niversaire,  La  Demeure  abandonnee,  Le  Poele  mou- 
rant,  and  Les  Souvenirs.  His  dramatic  attempts 
and  his  more  ambitious  poems,  the  Charlemagne 
and  the  Alfred,  will  not  be  remembered. 

The  Ernperor  himself  has  some  claim  to  a  place 
in  the  literature  of  his  age.  Napoleon  Bonaparte 
(1769-1821),  born  at  Ajaccio  in  the  island  of 


254:  French  Literature. 

Corsica  shortly  after  it  fell  under  French  rule, 
received  a  French  education  and  used  the  language 
always  with  power,  if  not  with  accuracy.  The 
great  events  of  his  life  belong  to  history,  and  need 
not  be  recounted  here.  His  literary  works  consist 
of  tliose  brilliantly  eloquent  proclamations  to  his 
soldiers  and  bulletins  of  his  campaigns,  which  are 
certainly  the  productions  of  a  very  high  order  of 
oratorical  genius;  his  messages  and  addresses  to 
various  state  bodies ;  his  correspondence  private 
and  public ;  and  his  Memoires  historiques,  written 
under  his  dictation  at  St.  Helena.  In  these  cam- 
paign memoirs,  his  style  is  simple,  precise,  and 
direct. 

His  brother,  Lucien  Bonaparte,  Prince  of  Canino 
(1775-1840),  was  also  born  at  Ajaccio  and  educated 
in  France.  He  was  President  of  the  Council  of 
Five  Hundred,  when  that  18th  Brumaire  dawned 
which  was  to  see  his  military  brother  all  powerful 
over  the  destinies  of  France ;  and  it  was  to  Lucien's 
help  on  that  occasion  that  Napoleon  owed  his  suc- 
cess. For  a  time  he  continued  docile  to  the  will  of 
the  more  imperious  Bonaparte ;  but,  opening  his 
eyes  at  last  to  Napoleon's  arbitrary  character  and 
boundless  ambition,  he  began  to  oppose  him. 
Matters  were  brought  to  a  crisis  by  Lucien's  re- 
fusal to  divorce  his  second  wife,  Madame  Jouber- 
thon,  the  widow  of  a  stockbroker,  even  for  the 
bribe  of  the  crowns  of  Italy  and  Spain.  Retiring 
to  his  estate  of  Canino,  in  the  province  of  Viterbo, 
Lucien  devoted  himself  to  art,  science,  and  litera- 
ture. It  was  by  the  Pope  that  he  was  created 
Prince  of  Canino  and  Musignano,  and  Rome  was 
his  favorite  resort.  Pursued  by  Napoleon's  hostil- 
ity, he  at  last  set  sail  for  America,  but  was  cap- 
tured by  the  English  and  taken  to  England.  On 
Napoleon's  retirement  to  Elba,  Lucien  was  allowed 
to  return  to  Rome,  where  he  had  been  living  at  the 
time  of  his  attempt  to  get  to  America.  His 
abilities  might  have  given  him  a  fair  place  in 


The  Socialists  ami  lh>ir   Contemporaries.    255 

literature,  had  he  not  made  the  mistake  of  trying 
to  produce  epic  poems.  His  Charlemagne  ou  Vfiglise 
delivree,  in  twentj'-four  cantos,  which  was  written 
and  published  in  London ;  and  his  La  Cyrneide  ou 
La  Corse  Sauvee,  were  both  tedious  efforts.  The 
pretended  memoirs  of  Lucien  are  not  considered 
authentic  by  modern  critics. 

Lucien's  eldest  son,  Charles  Lucien  Jules  Laurent 
Bonaparte  (1803-1857),  born  at  Paris,  won  some 
fame  as  a  naturalist,  and  especially  as  an  orni- 
thologist. He  wrote  one  or  two  works  on  natural 
history.  Another  son,  Louis  Lucien  Bonaparte, 
attained  some  eminence  as  a  chemist,  mineralogist, 
and  linguist. 

Louis  Bonaparte  (1778-1846),  Napoleon's  third 
brother,  whom  he  made  King  of  Holland,  and 
forced  to  marry  his  adopted  daughter,  Hortense 
Engenie  Beauharnais,  lived  in  retirement  after  the 
fall  of  the  Empejor,  and  formally  separated  from 
his  wife.  This  brother  of  one  emperor  and  father 
of  another  wrote  a  novel,  descriptive  of  Dutch 
manners  and  customs,  Afarie,  ou  les  Hollandaises  ; 
Documents  sur  le  Gouvernement  de  la  Hollande; 
Histoire  du  Parlement  Anglais  ;  and  a  criticism  of 
Norvins'  Napoleon. 

Hortense  Eugenie  Beauharnais  (1783-1837),  the 
daughter  of  Josephine  by  her  first  husband,  Gen- 
eral Beauharnais,  was  born  at  Paris.  Her  father 
was  one  of  the  early  victims  of  the  Revolution. 
Her  mother  was  protected  by  Barras,  and  after  her 
marriage  with  Napoleon,  soon  rose  to  the  highest 
position  in  the  State.  Hortense  perferred  General 
Desaix,  but  the  will  of  Napoleon  forced  her  to  marry 
Louis  and  become  Queen  of  Holland.  After  suffer- 
ing great  anxieties  about  her  two  sons  during  the 
risings  of  the  Carbonari  in  Italy,  where  one  of  the 
young  men  died,  she  settled  permanently  in  the 
residence  at  Arenenberg,  in  the  canton  Thurgau, 
which  had  been  her  habitual  resort  since  the  over- 
throw of  Napoleon.  She  was  a  good  song- writer. 


256  French  Literature. 

Her  best  known  song  is  that  Partantpour  la  Syrie, 
which  her  son  afterwards  made  the  national  air  of 
France.  She  also  wrote  La  Heine  Hortense  en 
Italic,  en  France,  et  en  Angleterre,  pendant  I'Annee 
1831. 

In  connection  with  the  Bonapartes,  may  be  men- 
tioned Madame  de  Remusat,  whose  Memoirs,  pub- 
lished by  her  grandson  in  1879,  give  so  intimate  a 
view  of  the  Napoleonic  court. 

Claire  Elisabeth  Jeanne  Gravion  de  Vergennes, 
Comtesse  de  Remusat  (1780-1821)  was  a  grand- 
niece  of  Louis  XYI.'s  minister,  Vergennes.  Her 
career  is  fresh  in  the  minds  of  the  readers  of  the 
Memoirs  and  Letters  lately  before  the  public.  She 
also  wrote  an  essay  Sur  V  Education  des  Femmes. 

The  sprightly  but  superficial  Memoirs  of  the 
Duchesse  d'Abrantes,  and  the  Memoirs  of  Las 
Cases  should  also  find  a  place  here.  The  title  of 
the  well-known  work  by  Marshal  Junot's  wife  is 
Memoires  ou  Souvenirs  Mstoriques  sur  Napoleon,  la 
Revolution,  le  Directoire,  le  Consulat  V Empire,  et  la 
Restauration,  and  is  certainly  full  of  promise,  but 
there  is  really  little  in  the  book  of  historic  value. 

Emmanuel  Auguste  Dieudonne,  Comte  de  Las 
Cases  (1766-1842),  was  born  in  the  chateau  of  Las 
Cases,  near  Revel.  He  was  in  the  naval  service 
when  the  Revolution  broke  out,  served  later  in  the 
Prince  of  Conde's  army,  was  an  exile  in  England, 
supporting  himself  by  teaching,  and  came  back  to 
France  on  Napoleon's  settling  a  firm  government. 
Getting  the  Emperor's  attention  by  his  fine 
Atlas  historique,  he  was  employed  by  him.  After 
Waterloo,  on  the  dethroned  Emperor's  sentence  of 
imprisonment,  Las  Cases  offered  to  share  his  fate. 
During  his  stay  at  St.  Helena,  he  acted  as  aman- 
uensis for  Napoleon ;  but  he  was  removed  some 
time  before  the  Emperor's  death.  After  that  event, 
he  published  the  Memorial  de  Sainte-Helbne.  He 
was  in  public  life  for  a  time  after  the  Revolution 
of  1830. 


The  Socialists  and  their   Contemporaries.    257 

To  these  may  be  added  the  Memoirs  of  the  Comte 
Miot  de  Melito,  diplomatist  under  the  Empire,  and 
an  acute  and  cool  observer  of  persons  and  events ; 
as  well  as  the  Letters,  recently  published  by  Pallain, 
of  that  singular  being,  the  Machiavelli  of  modern 
times,  Charles  Maurice  de  Talley rand-Peri gord, 
Prince  de  Benevento,  so  often  master  of  the  destinies 
of  France,  subtlest  of  diplomatists,  and  keenest  of 
wits. 

Some  mention  may  be  made  here  also  of  Memoirs 
of  a  very  different  kind — those  of  Vidocq,  the  de- 
tective. Fran9ois-Jules  Vidocq  (1775-1850),  born 
at  Arras,  successively  thief,  swindler,  soldier,  galley- 
slave,  highwayman,  informer,  spy,  chief  of  police, 
and  autobiograplier,  put  forth  his  book  when  Sue's 
novel  was  most  in  vogue,  with  the  title,  Les  Vrais 
Mys&res  de  Paris.  In  these  Memoirs  of  Vidocq 
occurs  a  song  in  the  flash  dialect,  which  Marginn 
translated  into  the  corresponding  English  thieves' 
dialect.  Both  versions  may  be  found  in  the 
"Noctes  Ambrosianae." 
17 


258  French  Literature. 


XVIII. 

AFTER  THE  RESTORATION. 

THE  philosophers  and  the  socialist  dreamers  of 
whom  I  have  already  spoken  were  an  outcome  of 
the  French  Revolution.  But  there  was  at  the  same 
time  an  under-current  of  thought  and  feeling,  which 
began  shortly  after  the  Restoration  to  take  definite 
form  as  a  powerful  re-action  against  the  tendencies 
and  forces  which  at  once  produced  and  followed 
the  Revolution.  Especially  was  there  a  re-action 
against  infidelity,  helped  into  its  earlier  literary, 
expression  by  the  somewhat  vague  religious  senti- 
ment of  Chateaubriand  and  the  Protestant  con- 
victions of  Madame  de  Stael,  and  carried  to  ultra- 
montane extremes  by  Joseph  De  Maistre.  Similar 
views  to  those  of  De  Maistre,  but  expressed  more 
temperately  and  with  more  emphasis  given  to  the 
political  side  of  the  question,  were  at  about  the 
same  time  strongly  brought  forward  by  De  Bonald. 

Louis  Gabriel  Ambroise,  Vicomte  de  Bonald 
(1753-1840),  was  born  at  Monna,  near  Milhau,  in 
Aveyron.  He  was  one  of  the  emigrants,  when  the 
fury  of  the  Revolution  burst  upon  society.  His 
first  work  of  note,  Theorie  du  Pouvoir  Politique  et 
Religieux,  foretold  the  Restoration.  When  Na- 
poleon had  established  a  strong  government,  De 
Bonald  returned  to  France,  and  entered  the  public 
service.  After  the  Restoration,  he  was  raised  to 
the  peerage  by  Louis  XVIII.  He  refused  to  take 
the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  new  government  after 
the  Revolution  of  July.  Besides  the  work  men- 
tioned above,  he  published  Legislation  Primitive, 
and  Recherches  Philosophiques  sur  les  Premiers 
Objets  des  Connaissances  Morales.  His  style  is  con- 


After  the  Restoration.  259 

fused,  and  his  views,  as  already  stated,  were  ex- 
treme ;  but  he  did  good  service  against  the  mate- 
rialism of  the  physiological  school. 

Another,  but  a  much  more  gentle  advocate  of  the 
claims  of  the  church  than  De  Bonald,  De  Maistre, 
or  De  Lamennais,  was  Pierre  Simon  Ballanche 
(1776-1847).  According  to  De  Vericour,  Ballanche 
was  as  full  of  charity  and  Christian  unction  as  Fene- 
lon,  and  might  be  classed  as  a  Catholic  transcendental  - 
ist.  He  styles  him  "  the  most  poetic  philosopher  and 
prose  writer  of  the  nineteenth  century,"  and  states 
that  "  all  his  works  are  marked  by  the  most  touch- 
ing sympathy  for  his  fellow-creatures ;  and  the  en- 
couragements he  gives  them  glow  as  if  with  pro- 
phetic fire."  His  works  were  Du  Sentiment  considere 
dans  la  Litterature  et  dans  les  Arts,  a  prose  poem 
called  Antigone,  an  essay  Sur  les  Institutions  sociales 
dans  leur  Rapport  av ec  les  Idees  nouvelles,  Le  Vie.il- 
lard  et  le  Jeune  Homme,  a  novel  entitled  Uhomme 
sans  Nom,  the  Vision  d'Hebal,  and,  above  all, 
Palincjenesie  Sociale. 

But  the  greatest,  and  at  one  time  apparently  the 
most  hopeful  movement  in  the  bosom  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  because  it  aimed  at  reconciling  the  author- 
ity of  the  Church  with  the  yearning  of  the  age  for 
free  government,  was  the  Liberal  Catholic  move- 
ment headed  by  Montalembert,  De  Lamennais,  and 
Lacordaire.  Montalembert  was  much  the  youngest 
of  these;  but  his  position,  his  genius,  and  his  undy- 
ing hopefulness  of  nature  identify  him  with  the 
movement  as  its  especial  protagonist. 

Charles  Forbes,  Comte  de  Montalembert  (1810- 
1870),  was  of  an  ancient  family  of  Poitou.  A  bom 
orator,  and  an  admirer  of  the  English  Constitution, 
of  Burke  and  of  Grattan,  he  was  fated  to  spend  his 
life  and  his  glowing  energies  in  the  tormenting  task 
of  trying  to  reconcile  his  love  of  liberty  with  his 
devotion  to  the  Holy  Roman  Church,  and  to  con- 
tend in  vain  for  a  basis  of  compromise  between  the 
church  and  the  state. 


260  French  Literature. 

His  whole  career  was  greatly  influenced  by  those 
two  able  men,  the  Abbe  de  Lamennais  and  the  Pere 
Lacordaire.  These  two  men  planned  and  published 
UAvenir  as  the  exponent  of  their  views.  Their 
great  object  was  to  place  the  Church  at  the  head 
of  the  liberal  movement.  They  were  cordially 
joined  by  Montalernbert.  But  it  was  not  long  before 
they  contrived  to  embroil  themselves  with  both  the 
Government  and  the  Church.  UAvenir  was  con- 
demned at  Rome.  Montalembert  and  Lacordaire 
submitted  ,•  but  De  Lamennais  broke  away  in  wrath 
from  the  Church,  published  his  famous  Paroles  dun 
Croyant,  wildly  and  fiercely  renouncing  a  body 
which  he  now  believed  to  be  at  war  with  liberty. 

Montalembert  turned  to  literature  for  solace,  pub- 
lished his  Du  Vandalisme  en  France,  a  plea  for  the 
old  cathedrals;  and  his  Histoire  de  S.  Elisabeth,  a. 
devout  and  enthusiastic  study  of  holy  life  in  the 
"  Ages  of  Faith."  On  reaching  the  age  which  per- 
mitted his  joining  in  the  debates  of  the  Chamber  as 
a  peer  of  France,  he  began  that  wonderful  oratorical 
career  in  which  his  genius  showed  itself  at  its  best. 
Sainte-Beuve  thus  describes  him  : 

"When  he  re-appeared  in  the  Chamber,  [his  first  ap- 
pearance had  been  when  he  stood  his  trial  before  his  peers 
for  opening  a  school  in  defiance  of  the  law,  along  with 
Lacordaire  and  De  Coux.]  he  had  the  right  to  say  any- 
thing, to  dare  anything,  so  long  as  he  retained  that  ele- 
gance of  aspect  and  diction  which  never  forsook  him.  He 
could  utter  with  all  freedom  the  most  passionate  pleadings 
for  that  liberty  which  was  the  only  excess  of  his  youth. 
He  could  develop  without  interruption  those  absolute 
theories  which  from  another  mouth  would  have  made  the 
Chamber  shiver,  but  which  pleased  them  from  his.  He 
could  even  give  free  course  to  his  mordant  and  incisive 
wit,  and  make  personal  attacks  with  impunity  upon  poten- 
tates and  ministers.  In  one  or  two  cases  the  Chancellor 
called  him  to  order  for  form's  sake ;  but  the  favor  which 
attends  ability  carried  everything  before  it.  His  bitterness 
—and  he  was  sometimes  bitter — from  him  seemed  almost 


After  the  Restoration.  261 

amenity,  the  harshness  of  the  meaning  being  disguised  by 
the  elegance  of  his  manner  and  his  perfect  grace." 

In  1837,  Montalembert  married  the  beautiful 
and  accomplished  daughter  of  Count  Felix  de  Merode, 
a  nobleman  of  an  ancient  Belgian  house,  and  with 
her  he  lived  a  happy  and  contented  home  life,  at 
the  same  time  enjoying  as  an  orator  many  public 
triumphs.  He  resolutely  opposed  to  the  last  the 
arbitrary  measures  of  the  Second  Empire,  and  the 
efforts  of  that  party  in  the  Church  which  aimed  at 
establishing  the  doctrine  of  Papal  Infallibility, 
though  on  his  deathbed,  soon  after  the  success  of 
that  party,  he  gave  in  his  adhesion  to  what  he  said 
he  did  not  pretend  to  understand.  Besides  his  works 
already  mentioned,  he  published,  among  other 
writings,  Les  Moines  d1  Occident  depute  $.  Benoit 
jusqu1  d  S.  Bernard,  L'Eylise  libre  dans  VEtat  libre, 
and  Le  Pape  et  Ed  Pologne. 

One  of  the  most  touching  incidents  in  Monta- 
lembert's  life  was  that  related  of  his  daughter's 
announcing  to  her  parents  her  desire  to  become  a 
nun;  and,  on  their  tenderly  seeking  to  know  what 
secret  sorrow  might  be  prompting  the  wish,  her 
pointing  to  a  passage  in  one  of  her  father's  worka 
in  which  he  eloquently  declared  that  blighted 
hearts  were  a  poor  sacrifice  to  offer  to  God. 

Hughes  Felicite  Robert  de  Lamennais  (1782- 
1854)  was  born  at  Saint  Malo.  He  took  the  ton- 
sure in  1811,  going  into  the  little  seminary  of  Saint 
Malo,  and  being  ordained  priest  some  years  later 
by  the  Bishop  of  Rennes.  A  tract  against  Na- 
poleon obliged  him  to  take  refuge  in  England. 
Other  works  of  his  had  already  given  him  some 
reputation  as  an  assailant  of  the  materialistic  phi- 
losophy of  the  day  ;  but  the  appearance  in  1817  of 
the  first  volume  of  his  Essai  sur  I1  Indifference  en 
Matibre  de  Religion  gave  him  at  once  European 
celebrity.  The  remaining  three  volumes  were 
equally  successful,  and,  when,  he  went  to  Rome, 


262  French  Literature. 

Pope  Leo  XII.  declared  him  to  be  "  the  last  Father 
of  the  Church."  His  later  course  I  have  already 
described.  After  the  Paroles  d\m  Croyant,  which 
proclaimed  his  rupture  with  the  Church,  he  put 
forth  a  series  of  works,  advocating  the  most  extreme 
democratic  doctrines.  He  ceased  to  believe  with 
the  Church  on  many  vital  points,  and  tried  to  con- 
struct from  his  natural  lights  a  system  of  Christian 
metaphysics.  His  most  labored  production  of  this 
peroid  was  his  Esquisse  d'une  Philosophic. 

Jean  Baptiste  Henri  Lacordaire  (1802-1861)  was 
born  at  Eecey-sur-Ource,  Cote-d'or,  the  son  of  a 
village  doctor.  Montalembert,  in  his  short  biog- 
raphy of  Le  Pbre  Lacordaire,  says  : 

"  He  had,  like  all  the  young  people  of  his  day,  lost  the 
faith  at  school,  and  had  not  recovered  it  either  at  the  law 
school  or  the  bar,  in  which  he  was  enrolled  for  two  years. 
To  all  outward  seeming,  nothing  distinguished  him  from 
his  contemporaries.  He  was  a  deist,  as  all  the  youth  was 
then  ;  he  was,  above  all,  liberal,  like  the  whole  of  France, 
but  without  excess.  He  had  said  it  again  and  again  :  no 
man  or  book  was  the  instrument  of  his  conversion.  A  sud- 
den and  secret  flash  of  grace  opened  his  eyes  to  the 
nothingness  of  irreligion.  In  a  single  day  he  became 
Christian,  and  the  very  next  day  from  Christian  he 
wished  to  be  priest." 

He  soon  became  famous  as  a  great  preacher,  pro- 
foundly in  earnest  and  of  a  brilliant  eloquence.  I 
have  already  the  story  of  his  association  with  Mont- 
alembert and  De  Lamennais  in  the  publication  of 
L'Avenir.  From  the  time  of  the  papal  condemna- 
tion of  that  journal,  he  devoted  himself  to  his  pul- 
pit duties.  His  sermons  at  Notre  Dame  drew  im- 
mense audiences.  He  produced  a  Life  of  Saint- 
Dominic,  and,  moved  by  his  enthusiasm  for  that 
order,  became  a  Dominican  friar.  This  led  to  his 
preaching  in  different  parts  of  France.  After  the 
Eevolution  of  1848,  he  for  a  short  time  went  into 
political  life,  as  one  of  the  representatives  from 


After  tht  Restoration.  263 

Marseille.  Preaching,  at  various  times,  again  at 
Notre-Dame,  he  finally  gathered  a  number  of  his 
sermons  of  both  the  earlier  and  later  periods,  and 
published  them  under  the  title,  Conferences  de  Notre 
Dame  de  Paris.  His  Oraisons  funebres  are  also 
esteemed  by  French  critics  as  worthy  to  be  placed 
beside  those  of  the  great  preachers  of  the  seven- 
teenth century. 

"We  have  now  reached  the  point  at  which  it  will 
be  fitting  to  take  up  those  metaphysical  thinkers 
who  have  mainly  directed  the  thought  of  France 
in  the  last  generation.  These  are  Cousin, 
Jouffroy,  Damiron,  and  Comte.  Cousin  was  pre- 
ceded by  Eoyer-Collard,  whose  busy  share  in  politi- 
cal life  has  somewhat  obscured  his  claims  to  notice 
as  a  philosopher. 

Pierre  Paul  Eoyer-Collard  (1763-1845)  was  born 
at  Sompuis,  Maine.-  He  was  at  first  prominent  in  the 
agitations  of  the  Revolution,  but  was  forced  to  live 
in  obscurity  during  the  Reign  of  Terror,  even  follow- 
ing the  plough  to  escape  the  sharp-eyed  messengers 
of  the  Jacobins.  When  Napoleon  came  into  power, 
Royer-Collard  was  placed  in  the  chair  of  philosophy 
in  the  University  of  France,  and  devoted  himself 
with  great  singleness  of  purpose  to  the  study  of 
metaphysics.  He  rejected  the  system  of  Condillac, 
studied  by  preference  the  Scottish  philosophers — 
Reid  and  Dugald  Stewart — and  began  that  system 
of  eclecticism  which  Cousin  afterwards  developed 
with  so  much  brilliancy.  The  Restoration  broke 
in  upon  these  studies,  as  Royer-Collard  was  soon 
drawn  into  political  life.  After  1842,  however,  he 
lived  in  retirement.  He  published  little ;  but  his 
influence  on  both  political  and  philosophical 
thought  was  very  great.  His  library-room  served 
as  a  sort  of  salon  in  which  were  to  be  met  men  like 
Cousin,  Guizot,  the  Due  de  Broglie,  Casimir  Perier, 
De  Barante,  Villemain,  Ampere,  and  De  Remusat. 
His  earnest  and  upright  character,  his  moderate 
and  sensible  views,  the  simplicity  of  his  life,  and 


264  French  Literature. 

his  love  for  books  caused  him  to  be  highly  esteemed 
by  such  men  as  these. 

Victor  Cousin  (1792-1867),  the  head  of  the  school 
of  Eclectic  Philosophy,  was  born  at  Paris,  the  son 
of  a  clock-maker.  He  was  at  first  Greek  tutor  in  the 
ficole  Norm  ale,  but  before  long  was  appointed  as- 
sistant to  Royer-Collard,  and,  on  the  retirement  of 
the  latter  from  his  professorship,  became  his  suc- 
cessor. He  expounded  the  doctrines  of  the  Scottish 
metaphysicians  with  great  clearness  and  power, 
added  to  them  with  discreet  eclecticism  principles 
borrowed  from  the  great  German  thinkers — Kant, 
Fichte,  Jacobi,  and  Schelling;  and  finally  drew 
largely  from  Hegel  'also,  combining  them  all  into  a 
symmetrical  whole,  equally  brilliant  and  seductive 
as  seeming  to  harmonize  views  at  first  sight  discord- 
ant. His  audiences  were  large  and  enthusiastic. 
As  a  lecturer  he  was  always  a  splendid  success. 
Eare  lucidity  of  exposition,  a  style  recalling  tliat  of 
Plato,  extraordinary  powers  of  generalization,  ad- 
mirable taste  and  skill  in  illustrating  the  deepest 
metaphysical  subtleties  from  history,  art,  science, 
and  daily  life,  were  qualities  which  gave  a  new 
charm  to  a  study  commonly  reputed  dry  and  repul- 
sive. He  took  some  part  in  public  life  when  the 
Revolution  of  1830  made  his  friend  Guizot  Prime 
Minister.  His  chief  works  were  the  Histoire  de  la 
Philosophie  auXVIIP  SiZcle;  Fragments  litter  air  es ; 
Fragments  philosophiques ;  a  translation  of  Plato ; 
literary  studies  of  Pascal,  Jacqueline  Pascal,  and 
J.  J.  Rousseau  ;  the  Du  Vrai,  du  Beau,  et  du  Bien; 
an  Introduction  a  T Histoire  de  la  Philosophie ;  Etudes 
sur  les  Femmes  Illustres  et  la  Societe  du  XVII6 
Sibcle  ;  Des  Principes  de  la  Revolution  fran^aise ; 
and  Lemons  de  Philosophie  sur  Kant.  His  ablest 
scholars  were  Jouffroy  and  Damiron. 

Theodore  Simon  Jouffroy  (1796-1842)  became  a 
professor  in  the  College  de  France.  He  published 
translations  of  Reid  and  Stewart.  His  best  known 
original  work  is  the  Melanges  Philosophiques. 


After  the  Restoration.  265 

Jean  Philibert  Damiron  (1794-1862)  was  also  a 
Professor  of  Metaphysics,  and  published  several 
philosophical  works,  among  them  a  Cours  de  Phil- 
osophic and  an  essay  on  Philosophic  en  France  an 
19*  Siecle.  Another  of  Cousin's  pupils  was  Louis 
Eugene  Marie  Bautain  (1796-1867),  born  at  Paris. 
He  wrote  La  Morale  de  VEvanyile  comparee  a  la 
Morale  des  Philosophes,  Philosophic-psychologic  ex- 
perimentale,  Philosophic  morale,  Philosophic  du 
Christianisme,  La  Religion  et  la  Liberte  considerees 
dans  leurs  Rapports,  and  La  Morale  de  VEvanyile 
comparee  aux  divers  Systemes  de  Morale. 

Others  of  this  school  were  Bouillet,  De  Cardail- 
lac,  Mazure,  Ozaneaux,  Hippeau,  Tissot,  Gamier, 
Poret,  Caro,  Paffe,  Caunes,  and  Geruzez. 

Among  the  opponents  of  eclecticism  was  Pierre 
Leroux  (1798-1871),  once  a  Saint  Simonian.  His 
Refutation  de  TBclectisme  was  the  ablest  of  the 
many  attacks  made  on  the  system  of  Cousin.  Pierre 
Leroux,  after  separating  from  Enfantin,  joined 
Reynaud  in  editing  the  Revue  Encyclopedique,  and, 
on  its  failure,  the  Encyclopedic  Nouvelle.  About 
the  time  of  his  attack  on  eclecticism,  he  published 
also  his  work  De  THumanite,  de  son  Principe,  et  de 
son  Avenir,  in  which  he  set  forth  his  own  philo- 
sophical views,  a  sort  of  modified  eclecticism  with  a 
belief  in  the  old  anima-mundi  theory  of  the  ancients 
superadded  to  it.  Later,  he  associated  himself  with 
Viardot  and  Madame  Dudevant  in  the  publication 
of  the  Revue  Independante.  He  was  also  the  author 
of  a  philosophic  poem,  of  a  drama  called  Job,  and 
of  a  translation  of  Goethe's  Werther. 

Auguste  Comte  (1796-1857),  the  founder  of  the 
Positive  Philosophy,  was  another  of  those  who  had 
once  been  Saint-Simonians.  After  breaking  away 
from  that  school,  he  became  Professor  of  Mathe- 
matics in  the  ficole  Poly  technique.  His  works 
were  Cours  de  Philosophic  Positive;  Discours  sur 
V Ensemble  du  Positivisme ;  System*  de  Politique 
Positive ;  and  Catechisme  Positiviste,  ou  Sommaire 


266  French  Literature. 

Exposition  de  la  Religion  Universelle.  He  produced 
also  works  on  analytical  geometry  and  on  astron- 
omy. His  main  idea  was  that  Theology  was  the 
law  of  man's  childhood,  Metaphysics  the  law  of  his 
youth,  and  Positivism  the  law  of  his  maturity,  this 
Positivism  being  the  search  of  humanity  after  the 
laws  that  produce  phenomena.  Positivism,  then, 
limits  all  legitimate  speculation  to  observed  facts. 
It  makes  a  religion  of  science,  and  ignores  all  that 
park  of  nature  within  and  without  us  which  science 
can  not  grasp  and  analyze. 

The  great  question  of  the  organization  of  labor 
which  the  socialists  brought  into  prominence  was 
treated  with  especial  attention  by  two  antagonistic 
thinkers,  Louis  Blanc  and  Michel  Chevalier. 

Jean  Joseph  Louis  Blanc  was  born  in  1813.  In 
a  Socialist  Review,  which  he  founded  in  Paris  in 
1838,  he  brought  out  his  chief  work  on  Socialism, 
the  Organisation  du  Travail,  afterwards  publishing 
it  in  a  separate  form.  This  book  won  him  great 
popularity  among  the  industrial  classes.  He  next 
published  his  Histoire  de  dix  Ans,  which  overthrew 
the  government.  His  Histoire  de  la  Revolution 
frangaise  followed,  in  which  he  prophesied  the 
triumph  of  Socialism.  When  the  Revolution  of 
1848  came,  Blanc  was  put  at  the  head  of  the  com- 
mission on  the  labor  question.  Involved  in  the 
insurrections  which  followed  the  attempt  to  inaugu- 
rate national  workshops,  he  was  forced  to  escape  to 
London.  During  his  exile,  he  wrote  his  Appel  aux 
Honnetes  Gens  and  his  Catechisme  des  Socialistes. 
These  were  followed  by  Pages  d>  Histoire  de  la 
Revolution  de  Fevrier,  Plus  de  Girondins,  and  La 
Republique  Une  et  Indivisible.  On  the  fall  of  the 
Second  Empire  at  Sddan,  Blanc  returned  to  France. 
His  French  Revolution  is  an  able  work. 

Michel  Chevalier  was  born  at  Limoges  in  1806. 
He  was  educated  to  be  an  engineer.  In  his  early 
life,  he  was  an  active  Saint-Simonian;  and,  when 
the  division  took  place  in  that  sect,  he  followed 


After  the  Restoration.  267 

Enfanwii,  helped  in  preparing  the  Livre  Nouveau, 
and  suffered  imprisonment  for  his  ardent  advocacy 
of  that  cause.  Later,  however,  he  retracted  all 
that  he  had  advanced  against  Christianity  and  the 
institution  of  marriage.  He  was  sent  by  the  gov- 
ernment to  the  United  States,  on  a  special  mission 
of  inquiry  into  our  canal  and  railroad  system.  He 
also  visited  England  with  a  similar  purpose.  Pub- 
lishing works  of  industrial  information  based  on 
these  travels  of  investigation,  and  pursuing  a  career 
of  earnest  devotion  to  his  profession,  he  gained  in 
time  a  position  of  distinction  in  the  state.  In  reply 
to  Blanc's  work,  he  wrote  his  Lettres  sur  T  Organ- 
isation du  Travail.  He  also  published  works  on 
political  economy  and  on  Mexico. 

Among  the  writers  on  political  philosophy  must 
be  classed  Charles  de  Remusat,  De  Tocqueville, 
Guizot,  De  Cormenin,  and  the  Emperor  Louis 
Napoleon. 

Fra^ois  Marie  Charles,  Comte  de  Remusat 
(1797-1875),  the  son  of  a  Proven9al  gentleman, 
Auguste  Laurent,  Comte  de  Remusat,  and  of  that 
Madame  de  Remusat  whose  Letters  and  Memoirs 
have  lately  been  put  before  the  world,  was  born  at 
Paris,  and  began  his  political  career  as  a  journalist 
under  the  influence  of  Guizot;  but  at  a  later  period 
he  pursued  a  more  independent  course.  The  most 
important  of  his  earlier  essays  were  Sur  la  Re- 
sponsibilite  des  Afinisteres,  Sur  la  Liberte  de  la 
Presse,  Sur  la  Procedure  par  Juris  en  Afattire 
Criinindle,  and  Sur  les  Amendements  a  la  Loi  des 
Elections.  He  figured  among  those  journalists 
whose  protest  emphasized  the  popular  discontent 
with  the  governmental  measures  which  produced 
the  Revolution  of  1830.  He  went  then  into  public 
life  and  held  some  important  offices,  continuing  to 
serve  the  State  in  such  capacities  after  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1848.  When  Louis  Napoleon  overthrew 
the  republic,  De  Remusat  was  exiled  for  a  time. 
During  the  Second  Empire  he  devoted  himself  to 


268  French  Literature. 

literature  and  science.  His  works  on  non-political 
subjects  were  Essais  de  Philosophic,  Histoire  d"1  Abe- 
lard,  Saint  Anselme  de  Canterbury,  UAnyleterre  au 
dix'huitieme  Siecle,  Passe  et  Present,  Bacon,  Hart- 
ley, Histoire  de  la  Philosophic  anglaise  de  Bacon  d 
Locke,  and  a  philosophical  drama  entitled  Abelard. 
Charles  Henri  Alexis  Cleret  de  Tocqueville 
(1805-1859)  was  born  at  the  chateau  of  Verneuil, 
near  Mantes,  in  the  department  of  Seine-et-Oise. 
In  1831  he  came  to  the  United  States  with  Gustave 
de  Beaumont  on  a  mission  from  the  Government  to 
examine  and  report  on  the  practical  working  of  the 
penitentiary  system.  He  used  the  occasion  to 
study  the  influence  of  a  democratic  form  of  gov- 
ernment on  the  institutions,  social  manners,  and 
literature  of  a  country.  On  returning,  besides 
publishing  with  his  colleague  a  report  Du  Systeme 
penitentiaire  aux  Etats-  Unis,  he  put  forth  the  result 
of  his  studies  in  his  great  work,  De  la  Democratic 
en  Amerique.  Royer-Collard  styled  this  work  "  a 
continuation  of  Montesquieu."  A  great  sensation 
was  produced  by  it,  and  De  Tocqueville  at  once 
took  rank  as  the  greatest  thinker  of  his  day  in  the 
science  of  political  philosophy.  The  clearness  and 
keenness  of  his  vision  in  a  sphere  of  observation 
where  the  facts  are  exceedingly  complex,  the  fair- 
ness of  his  judgments,  the  thoroughness  with 
which  he  had  digested  the  vast  array  of  facts  before 
him,  and  the  sirnplicitj^,  force,  warmth,  and  vivacity 
of  his  style  won  him  golden  opinions  from  the 
most  judicious  critics  on  both  continents.  When 
he  visited  England,  he  received  an  enthusiastic 
welcome  from  the  Whig  leaders.  There  he  mar- 
ried an  English  lady.  Later,  though  at  first  de- 
feated, he  was  in  the  end  sent  to  the  Chamber  by 
the  people  of  that  Norman  department  in  which 
the  old  family  estate  of  Tocqueville  lay.  He  was 
one  of  the  strongest  opponents  of  the  Socialist 
movement.  When  Louis  Napoleon  destroyed  the 
liberty  of  the  people,  De  Tocqueville  retired  to  his 


After  the  Restoration.  269 

Norman  estate  and  devoted  himself  to  agriculture. 
There  be  wrote  Uancien  Regime  et  la  Revolution.  He 
died  at  Cannes,  whither  he  had  gone  for  his  health. 
In  1860,  De  Beaumont  published  his  friend's 
(Euvres  et  Correspondance  inedites,  with  a  biograph- 
ical notice. 

Gustave  de  Beaumont  (1802-1866)  was  born  at 
Beaumont-la  Chartre,  in  the  department  of  Sarthe. 
His  course  was,  throughout,  that  of  his  friend,  De 
Tocqueville.  He  was  Lafayette's  grandson,  and  he 
married  his  cousin,  the  daughter  of  Georges  La- 
fayette. Besides  the  Penitentiary  Eeport  which  he 
prepared  in  conjunction  with  De  Tocqueville,  he 
produced  J/an'e,  ou  VEsclavaye  aux  Etats-  Unis,  and 
Ulrlande,  sociale,  polilique,  et  reliyieuse. 

Franyois  Pierre  Guillaume  Guizot  (1787-1874) 
has  Avon  his  greatest  literary  distinction  as  a  his- 
torian. But  he  was  also  a  remarkable  orator, 
statesman,  and  publicist.  He  was  born  at  Nirnes, 
of  Protestant  parents.  His  father,  a  lawyer,  per- 
ished on  the  revolutionary  scaffold.  By  his  mother 
he  was  then  taken  to  Geneva.  He  betook  himself 
to  Paris  in  1805,  and  devoted  himself  to  literary 
pursuits.  His  first  important  publication  was  a 
Didionnaire  des  Synonymes  fran^ais,  after  which 
he  put  forth  the  Vie  de  Corneille  et  de  Shakspeare, 
and  a  translation  of  Gibbon,  with  valuable  histor- 
ical notes.  In  1812,  he  was  appointed  Professor  of 
History,  and  began  that  series  of  historical  works 
on  which  his  fame  chiefly  rests.  After  the  Resto- 
ration he  took  part  in  politics,  writing  his  Histoire 
des  Orifjines  du  Gouvernement  Representatif,  and 
other  works  on  the  philosophy  of  political  in- 
stitutions. 

In  conjunction  with  other  men  of  letters,  he  pub- 
lished two  most  valuable  collections  of  Memoirs 
throwing  light  on  French  history,  numbering  in  all 
fifty-seven  volumes.  Besides,  also,  editing  several 
works,  he  published  his  Histoire  de  la  Revolution 
d Anyleterre,  and  his  Histoire  de  la  Civilisation  en 


270  French  Literature. 

France.  After  the  Eevolution  of  1830,  he  stren- 
uously supported  Casirnir  Perier,  held  several  high 
offices  in  the  State,  and  labored  earnestly  for  im- 
provements in  education.  After  serving  as  ambas- 
sador to  England,  he  became  Prime  Minister  until 
the  fall  of  Louis  Philippe.  His  restrictive  measures, 
his  cold  and  austere  manner,  and  his  rigid  impassi- 
bility, together  with  the  general  offensiveness  to 
the  nation  of  the  government  which  he  represented, 
made  Guizot  at  this  time  one  of  the  most  unpopular 
men  in  France. 

Escaping  to  London  when  the  crash  came,  he 
was  there  well  received,  in  spite  of  his  identifica- 
tion with  the  selfish  policy  which  the  "  Citizen- 
King  "  had  pursued  both  at  home  and  abroad. 

His  pamphlet  entitled  Guizot  a  ses  Amis  failed  to 
restore  the  confidence  of  the  French  people.  The 
violent  seizure  of  the  government  by  Louis  Na- 
poleon in  December,  1851,  put  an  end  to  Guizot's 
intrigues  to  bring  about  a  restoration  of  the  mon- 
archy ;  and  he  returned  to  his  literary  labors, 
writing  Memoires  pour  servir  a  THistoire  de  mon 
Temps,  Meditations  sur  Vfitat  actuel  de  la  Religion 
chretienne,  Melanges  biographique  et  litteraires,  and 
Melanges  politiques  et  historiques.  Besides  these 
works  may  also  be  named  his  Monk,  ou  Chute  de 
la  Republique  et  Retablissement  de  la  Monarchic  en 
Angleterre;  Washington,  son  Caractere  et  son  In- 
fluence dans  la  Revolution  d1  Amerique,  Etudes  sur 
les  Beaux-arts,  and  a  History  of  France  as  told  to 
his  grandchildren.  This  last-mentioned  work  was 
published  after  his  death. 

Politically,  Guizot's  position  was  that  of  a  Con- 
stitutionalist,equally  opposed  to  absolute  monarchies 
and  to  republican  governments.  His  horror  of  dis- 
order led  him  to  prefer  authority  to  liberty,  when 
there  was  strong  danger  of  liberty's  degenerating 
into  anarchy.  His  style  of  oratory  was  incisive 
and  impressive ;  he  kept  steadily  to  his  subject, 
and  allowed  nothing  to  draw  him  away  from  it. 


After  the  Restoration.  271 

His  speeches  were  wholly  impersonal,  in  spite  of 
the  temptation  which  must  often  have  assailed  him 
to  indulge  in  recrimination  when  Berryer,  Barrot, 
Thiers,  Arago,  and  Mauguin  rained  upon  him  their 
fierce  philippics. 

As  a  writer,  his  chief  qualities  are  great  erudition, 
a  passion  for  order  and  for  generalization,  elevation 
of  sentiment,  loftiness  of  view,  impartiality,  and 
closeness  of  analysis.  His  style  is  defective.  It 
lacks  the  charm  which  we  look  for  when  reading  a 
great  French  writer.  Nor  does  Guizot  impress  the 
reader  as  one  who  knows  the  human  heart.  The 
vast  fund  of  knowledge  displayed  has  all  been 
drawn  from  books.  There  is  nothing  to  indicate 
personal  observation  as  the  source  of  anything  he 
has  written,  or  to  point  to  his  possession  of  that 
gift  of  sympathy  by  which  imaginative  men  of 
genius  are  able  to  re-animate  the  people  of  the  past 
and  set  them  vividly  before  us. 

We  turn  now  to  an  agitator  in  behalf  of  popular 
rights,  who  left  behind  him  the  reputation  of  hav- 
ing been  the  greatest  of  pamphleteers.  This  was 
Courier. 

Paul  Louis  Courier  (1772-1825)  was  born  at 
Paris.  He  served  in  the  Italian  campaign,  resigned 
from  the  army  after  the  battle  of  Wagram,  acquired 
some  literary  reputation  as  a  translator  from  the 
classics ;  but  directly  after  the  Restoration  began 
his  brilliant  career  as  a  pamphleteer.  Living  on  a 
small  estate  in  Touraine,  he  poured  forth  one  after 
the  other  caustic  criticisms  on  the  course  of  the 
government,  the  keen  and  cutting  irony  of  which 
recalled  the  masterly  style  of  Pascal.  For  one  po- 
litical diatribe  the  government  had  him  prosecuted 
and  condemned  to  imprisonment.  His  inimitable 
wit  and  the  Attic  simplicity  of  his  style  give  his 
productions  high  literary  value.  His  last  piece, 
put  forth  the  year  before  his  assassination,  with 
the  title  Pamphlet  des  Pamphlets,  was  styled  by 


272  French  Literature. 

Armand  Carrel — who  published  in,  1835  a  complete 
edition  of  his  works — The  Swan's  Death -song. 

Beranger,  with  his  pungent  sarcasm  and  biting 
scorn,  was  about  the  same  time  making  his  politi- 
cal songs  as  dreadful  to  the  Ministry  as  were 
Courier's  pamphlets.  But  in  one  respect  Courier 
differed  widely  from  Beranger  as  a  political  agita- 
tor :  he  abhorred  the  Napoleonic  legend  which  with 
Beranger  had  become  the  natural  rallying  point 
against  the  evils  of  Bourbon  rule. 

Another  of  the  formidable  enemies  of  the  re- 
actionary government  was  De  Cormenin. 

Louis  Marie  de  la  Haye,  Yicomte  de  Cormenin 
(1788-1868),  was  born  at  Paris.  He  had  an  im- 
mense political  influence  through  the  whole  period 
which  elapsed  from  the  time  of  the  Restoration  to 
the  day  of  his  death.  His  pamphlets  were  almost 
as  famous  as  those  of  Courier.  His  work,  Le  Droit 
Adtninistratif,  his  Etudes  sur  les  Orateurs  Parle- 
mentaires,  and  his  Le  Droit  de  Tonnage  en  Algerie 
were  all  works  of  merit.  Les  Entretiens  de  Village 
was  another  work  of  his. 

Another  historian,  who  was  also  orator  and 
statesman,  was  Thiers. 

Louis  Adolphe  Thiers  (1797-1877)  was  born  at 
Marseille.  Studying  law  at  Aix,  he  formed  there 
a  close  intimacy  with  Mignet  the  historian,  and 
with  him  sought  Paris  to  begin  his  career  there  as 
political  journalist.  His  Histoire  de  la  Revolution 
frangaise  by  its  clearness  of  narration,  accuracy, 
and  vigor  of  style,  at  once  gave  him  reputation. 
His  fatalist  theory,  by  which  he  justified  all  the 
excesses  of  each  party  in  its  hour  of  triumph, 
detracts  greatly  from  the  philosophic  value  of  this 
work.  When  the  struggle  began  which  led  to  the 
overthrow  of  the  government  in  1830,  Thiers  by 
working  heartily  'with  the  Liberals  had  no  small 
share  in  bringing  about  the  revolution.  He  now 
became  one  of  the  leading  public  men  of  France,  in 
spite  of  the  ludicrous  appearance  which  he  presented 


After  the  Restoration.  273 

in  the  Chamber  with  his  diminutive  person  and 
huge  spectacles.  His  parliamentary  oratory,  how- 
ever, soon  won  him  attention,  and  he  was  always  a 
prominent  member  of  the  government  or  of  the 
opposition.  When  the  republic,  set  up  in  1848, 
was  overthrown  by  Louis  Napoleon  in  1851,  Thiers 
was  banished.  He  was  soon,  however,  allowed  to 
return.  He  had  been  working  for  many  years  on 
his  Histoire  du  Consulat  et  de  TEmpire.  At  last 
this  work  was  published  in  1860.  A  few  years 
after,  he  again  entered  public  life,  this  time  as  a 
member  of  the  party  in  opposition.  On  the  down- 
fall of  the  Second  Empire,  he  once  more  came  into 
prominence,  was  put  at  the  head  of  the  Provisional 
Government,  made  peace  with  Prussia,  and  became 
President  of  the  new  republic,  giving  way  in  1873 
to  Marshal  MacMahon. 

Narcisse  Achille,  Comte  de  Salvandy  (1796- 
1856),  born  at  Condom,  was  another  of  those 
engaged  in  political  life  who  also  wrote  history. 
He  put  forth  many  political  pamphlets ;  wrote, 
after  a  travel  into  Spain,  a  romance  styled  Alonzo ; 
and  published,  in  1829,  his  Histoire  de  Pologne 
avant  et  sous  le  Roi  Jean  SobiesTci.  The  style  of 
this  history,  according  to  De  Vericour,  is  too  often 
declamatory  and  pompous. 

Among  recent  historians,  one  of  the  most  emi- 
nent was  Pierre  Lanfrey  (1828-1877).  He  was 
born  in  Savoy.  His  first  work  was  UEglise  et  les 
Philosophes  du  18*  Siecle.  After  this  came  his 
Histoire  politique  des  Papes  and  Le  Retablissement 
de  la  Pologne.  But  the  great  work  of  his  life  was 
his  Histoire  de  Napoleon  /.,  published  in  six 
volumes.  It  is  a  very  thorough  study  of  the 
imperial  period,  and  exposes  with  unrelenting  clear- 
ness of  narrative  and  fulness  of  detail  the  selfish 
character  of  the  first  Emperor.  When  the  Franco- 
German  war  came  on,  Lanfrey  took  the  field  with 
the  garde  mobile,  and  fought  like  a  true  Frenchman. 
Later,  he  was  appointed  by  Thiers  ambassador  to 


274  French  Literature. 

Switzerland.  On  MacMahon's  election  to  the 
presidency,  Lanfrey  resigned  this  post.  Some  two 
years  before  his  death,  he  was  elected  life-senator. 

The  Emperor  Louis  Napoleon  must  be  classed 
among  those  writers  who  have  written  history  from 
a  political  motive.  With  the  startling  and  roman- 
tic events  of  his  life  we  have  nothing  to  do  here. 
His  career  belongs  to  history.  His  literary  work 
may  be  summed  up  in  a  few  words. 

Charles  Louis  Napoleon  Bonaparte  (1808-1873) 
was  born  in  the  purple,  in  the  palace  of  the  Tuile- 
ries.  Daring  his  wandering  life,  before  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1848  opened  the  way  for  him  to  gain  a 
political  foothold  in  France,  he  published  at  various 
times  his  Reveries  Politiques,  Projet  de  Constitution, 
Deux  Mots  U  M.  de  Chateaubriand  sur  la  Duchesse 
de  Berri,  Considerations  Politiques  et  Militaires  sur 
la  Suisse,  Manuel  d1  Artillerie,  and  Idees  Napoleoni- 
ennes.  While  imprisoned  in  the  fortress  of  Ham, 
he  wrote  his  Aux  Manes  de  TEmpereur,  Fragments 
Historiques,  Analyse  de  la  Question  de  Suisse,  Reponse 
a  M.  de  Lamartine,  and  Extinction  du  Pauperisme, 
besides  assisting  in  editing  the  Dictionnaire  de  la 
Conversation.  While  Emperor,  he  published  his 
Vie  de  Jules  •  Cesar,  intended  to  set  forth  the 
Napoleonic  theory  of  politics,  already  announced 
in  that  famous  passage  of  the  first  Napoleon's  on 
Les  Saitveurs  des  Nations. 

Another  political  writer,  and  one  of  marked 
ability,  was  that  PreVost-Paradol,  whose  suicide 
while  ambassador  at  Washington  was  believed  to 
have  been  caused  by  his  despair  when  the  Emperor 
allowed  the  war-party  at  court  to  force  his  judg- 
ment. 

Lucien  Anatole  Prdvost-Paradol  (1829-1870) 
was  born  at  Paris.  Distinguished  as  journalist,  he 
published  at  different  times  an  JKloge  de  Bernardin 
de  Saint- Pierre,  Revue  de  THistoire  universelle,  Du 
Role  de  la  Famille  dans  I1  Education,  Etudes  sur  les 
Moralities,  Precis  de  VHitfoire  universelle,  De  la 


After  the  Restoration.  275 

Liberte  des  Guiles  en  France,  Essais  de  Politique  et 
de  la  Litterature,  and  Quelques  Pages  d1  Histoire  con- 
temporaine. 

Turning  now  to  those  historians,  not  so  closely 
connected  with  the  political  history  of  their  times, 
we  find,  among  those  whose  fame  had  begun  before 
the  liestoration,  Philippe  Paul  de  Se"gur,  who  was 
born  at  Paris  in  1780.  His  father,  the  Comte 
Louis  Philippe  de  Segur,  was  for  many  years 
ambassador  at  St.  Petersburg  and  a  great  favorite 
with  the  Empress  Catharine  II.,  and  was  himself 
the  author 'of  many  works,  among  them  Pensees 
Politiques,  Histoire  de  Frederic  Guillaume  II., 
Contes,  Fables,  Chansons,  et  Vers,  and  Memoir es  ou 
Souvenirs  et  Anecdotes.  The  son  was  one  of  Napo- 
leon's generals,  and  wrote  the  history  of  the  disas- 
trous Russian  campaign  in  which  he  shared.  This 
work  is  entitled  Histoire  de  Napoleon  et  de  la  Grande 
Armee  en  1812.  ft  was  a  great  success.  He  after- 
wards wrote  a  Lettre  sur  la  Campayne  du  General 
Macdonald  dans  les  Grisons ;  and  two  histories, 
Histoire  de  Russie  et  de  Pierre  le  Grand,  and  His- 
toire de  Charles  VIII.,  Roi  de  France. 

Antoine  Guillaume  Prosper  Brugiere,  Baron  de 
Baraute  (1782-1866),  was  born  at  Riom.  He  was 
early  employed  in  diplomatic  service.  On  the 
Restoration,  he  was  still  employed  in  various  pub- 
lic capacities,  but  kept  up  throughout  his  state 
service  his  devotion  to  letters.  After  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1830,  he  was  again  an  ambassador,  but 
retired  from  public  life  on  the  establishment  of  the 
republic  in  1848.  His  great  work  was  his  Histoire 
des  Dues  de  Bourgogne.  Among  his  other  writings 
were  La  Litterature  franchise  pendant  le  dix-huitieme 
Si&cle,  Les  Etudes  litteraires  et  historiques,  and  Le 
Parlement  et  la  Fronde.  In  his  History  of  the 
Dukes  of  Burgundy,  he  gives  a  simple,  clear,  and 
elegant  narrative  of  events  in  a  lively,  dramatic 
style,  telling  his  story  without  stopping  to  investi- 
gate and  explain  in  tiie  presence  of  the  reader.  It 


276  French  Literature. 

is  a  bright,  busy,  and  picturesque  recital  full  of 
stirring  incidents,  luminously  put  before  the  mind 
in  a  most  attractive  manner. 

Augustin  Thierry  and  his  brother  Amede'e  were 
both  historians,  though  the  former  has  left  a  repu- 
tation far  more  brilliant  and  solid  than  the  latter. 

Jacques  Nicolas  Augustin  Thierry  (1795-1856) 
was  born  at  Blois.  His  first  work  was  De  la  reor- 
ganisation de  la  Societe  Europeenne.  This  work 
considers  the  question  of  uniting  all  Europe  under 
one  government.  Starting  with  so  close  an  approx- 
imation to  the  Saint-Simonian  doctrines,  Thierry 
was  soon  a  declared  advocate  and  assistant  of  Saint- 
Simon.  Later,  he  worked  with  Comte  and  Dunoyer. 
Having  published  in  1820  some  letters,  in  a  journal, 
on  French  history,  he  became  interested  in  historical 
subjects,  and  in  1825  published  his  Histoire  de  la 
Conquete  de  VAngleterre  par  les  Normands,  which 
at  once  gave  him  high  rank  among  historians.  His 
Lettres  sur  I1  Histoire  followed ;  but,  after  that,  he 
became  nearly  blind  in  consequence  of  his  arduous 
studies.  Going  to  Hyeres  for  his  health,  he  met 
there  and  married  Julie  de  Querengal,  a  lady  who 
had  herself  some  literary  reputation.  His  eyesight 
being  partly  restored,  and  his  wife  aiding  him  faith- 
fully in  his  work,  he  next  published  Dix  Ans 
deludes  historiques,  and  Recits  des  Temps  Mero- 
vinyiens.  His  last  work  was  an  essay  Sur  V Histoire 
de  la  Formation  et  du  Progres  du  Tiers  IJJtat.  His 
researches  threw  great  light  upon  early  French 
history  and  dissipated  a  host  of  errors  which  had 
been  repeated  without  investigation  by  writer  aftei 
writer. 

Ame'dee  Thierry  was  born  at  Blois  in  1797.  Besides 
his  Resume  de  V Histoire  de  Guyenne,  he  wrote  a  book 
of  profound  historical  research  which  gave  him 
great  reputation.  This  was  his  Histoire  de  la  Gaule 
sous  la  Domination  des  Romains.  Of  this  work  his 
brother  wrote,  in  his  history  of  his  own  historical 
ideas  and  labors,  given  as  a  preface  to  his  Dix 


After  the  Restoration.  277 

Ans  oT  fitudes  historiques:  "  He  was  preparing  to  give 
to  the  public  one  half  of  the  prolegomena  of  the 
history  of  France — the  Keltic  origins,  with  an 
account  of  the  Gallic  migrations,  and  a  picture  of 
Gaul  under  the  Roman  administration.  For  my 
own  part,  I  undertook  to  give  the  other  part,  that 
is  to  say,  the  Germanic  origins,  and  a  picture  of  the 
great  invasions  which  caused  the  ruin  of  the  West- 
ern Roman  empire.  I  experienced  a  heartfelt 
delight  at  the  idea  of  this  fraternal  association — at 
the  hope  of  fixing  our  two  names  on  the  double 
basis  upon  which  must  be  placed  the  edifice  of  our 
national  history." 

I  have  already  had  occasion  to  mention  Mignet, 
in  speaking  of  Thiers,  who  studied  law  with  him 
at  Aix,  whence  they  went  to  Paris  together,  to 
engage  in  literary  life. 

Frangois  Auguste  Alexis  Mignet  was  born  at 
Aix  in  Provence  in  1796.  He  began  literary  work 
as  a  journalist.  Having  given  lectures  on  history 
which  were  well  received,  he  was  encouraged  to 
undertake  his  Histoire  de  la  Revolution  Franchise, 
which  treated  that  great  series  of  events  from  a 
philosophical  point  of  view.  He  takes,  however, 
the  same  fatalist  views  which  his  friend  Thiers  held 
and  expressed.  After  the  Revolution  of  1830, 
Mignet  held  office  for  a  time;  but  that  of  1848 
drove  him  into  private  life.  His  later  works  were 
Notices  historiques,  Memoir es  sur  des  Questions 
d'Histoire,  'Histoire  d1  Antonio  Perils,  Histoire  des 
Negociations  relatives  a  la  Succession  (VEspagne, 
Histoire  de  Marie  Stuart,  Histoire  de  V Abdication  et 
des  demises  Annees  de  Charles- Quint,  and  Rivalite 
de  Francois  I.  et  de  Charles  V.  His  style  is  firm 
and  pure,  his  matter  the  result  of  profound  research 
and  penetrating  insight  into  the  entanglements  of 
politics.  Conciseness  is  a  marked  characteristic 
of  his  style.  The  Eloges  pronounced  by  Mignet 
must  also  be  mentioned.  They  are  striking  pictures 
of  a  number  of  eminent  men. 


278  French  Literature. 

We  come  now  to  a  historian  of  a  different  order. 
Michelet,  the  disciple  of  Vico  and  Niebuhr.  the 
seeker  after  symbolic  truths  in  historical  facts,  is  a 
marked  contrast  to  men  like  Thiers,  Mignet,  and 
the  Thierrys.  A  poetic  imagination,  a  rare  ability 
in  painting  individuals  and  masses,  a  brilliant  and 
glowing  style,  and  a  great  fund  of  knowledge  united 
to  form  in  Michelet,  in  many  respects,  a  model  his- 
torian. But  his  visionary  theories  made  his  nar- 
rative too  often  unsound  in  its  general  tenor. 

Jules  Michelet  (1798-1874)  was  born  at  Paris, 
studied  under  Villemain  and  Leclerc,  and  early  be- 
came a  Professor  of  History.  His  chief  works 
were  a  Precis  de  VHistoire  moderne,  a  translation  of 
Vice's  works,  Introduction  a  VHistoire  universelle, 
Histoire  romaine,  Les  Memoires  de  Luther,  Les  Ori- 
gines  du  Droit  franc,  aise,  Histoire  de  France,  Histoire 
de  la  Revolution  fran^aise,  and  Les  Femmes  de  la 
Revolution. 

Entering  into  controversy  with  the  Jesuits,  he 
brought  out  against  them  Des  Jesuites  ;  DuPretre, 
de  la  Femme,  et  de  la  Famille  ;  and  Du  Peuple.  He 
took  no  part  in  the  stir  of  the  Eevolution  of  1848, 
which  swept  so  many  literary  men  into  the  vortex 
of  politics.  But  when  the  republic  fell,  he  refused 
to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  Louis  Napoleon. 
Besides  his  historical  and  controversial  works,  he 
wrote  those  fanciful  and  rhetorical  and  somewhat 
hysterical  books  by  which  perhaps  he  is  best  known 
in  this  country,  V  Oiseau,  L'Insecte,  L*  Amour,  La 
Femme,  La  Mer,  La  Sorci&re,  La  Bible  de  THuman- 
ite,  and  Nos  Fils.  The  Memoirs  of  his  wife  may 
also  be  given  a  place  here. 

Merle  D'Aubigne,  as  the  historian  of  the  Kefor- 
mation,  holds  a  high  rank  in  the  estimation  of  many 
in  England  and  this  country.  His  work,  however, 
in  the  judgment  of  impartial  critics,  is  as  full  of 
prejudice  in  one  direction  as  Audin's  bitter  life  of 
Luther  is  in  the  other. 

Jean  Henri   Merle  d'Aubigne  (1794-1872)  was 


After  the  Restoration.  279 

born  at  Eaux- Vives,  near  Geneva.  Studying  under 
Neander  at  Berlin,  he  afterwards  became  pastor  of 
the  French  Protestant  church  at  Hamburg.  Later, 
he  lived  in  Brussels,  and,  later  still,  returned  to 
Geneva  and  became  Professor  of  Church  History 
there.  His  great  work  was  the  Histoire  de  la  Refor- 
mation au  seizilme  Sibcle.  He  wrote  also  Le  Protec- 
teur,  ou  la  Republique  cFAngleterre  aux  Jours  de  Crom- 
well; Trois  Slides  de  Lutte  en  Ecosse  ;  Histoire  de  la 
Reformation  en  Europe  au  Temps  de  Calvin. 

In  closing  the  sketch  of  historical  writers,  I  must 
merely  mention  such  works  as  Dulaure's  history  of 
Paris ;  other  writers  on  the  Revolution  besides  those 
already  mentioned — Lacretelle,  Tissot,  Labaume, 
Montgaillard,  Cony,  and  De  Norvins ;  Bignon's 
history  of  France  under  Napoleon  ;  and  the  volumi- 
nous productions  of  Capefigue — his  history  of  Philip 
Augustus;  of  the  Restoration;  of  France  in  the 
Middle  Ages;  of  .the  Reform,  the  League,  and 
Henri  IV.'s  reign;  of  Richelieu,  Mazarin,  and  the 
Fronde;  of  Louis  XIV.'s  reign;  of  the  Regent 
Philip  of  Orleans ;  and  of  Europe  during  the  Con- 
sulate and  Empire  of  Napoleon. 

Just  as  briefly  must  be  named  Mazure's  History 
of  the  English  Revolution  of  1688 ;  Armand  Car- 
rel's History  of  the  English  Restoration ;  Fauriel's 
History  of  Southern  Gaul  under  the  dominion  of  the 
German  conquerors ;  Delecluze's  History  of  Florence  ; 
St.  Hilaire's  History  of  Spain  ;  and  General  Foy's 
History  of  the  Peninsular  War. 

Duret,  Wallon,  Jung,  Double,  Jonquiere,  and 
Lacroix  have  also  produced  historical  works. 

Mention  should  also  be  made  of  three  valuable 
works  on  the  subject  of  the  Huguenots :  Peyrat's 
Histoire  des  Pasteurs  du  Desert  ;  Coquerel's  Histoire 
des  figlises  du  Desert ;  and  Crottet's  Histoire  des 
^Jglises  Reformees  de  Pons,  Gemozac,  et  Montange,  en 
Saintonge. 

Able  histories  of  the  civil  war  in  the  United 
States  have  been  produced  by  the  Comte  de  Paris 
and  by  Ernest  Grasset. 


280  French  Literature. 


XIX. 

POETS  AND  PLAYWEITEES. 

THE  Restoration  opens  with  two  lyric  poets, whose 
influence  dominates  the  age.  The  one,  the  Poet  of 
the  People,  is  Beranger.  The  other,  the  Poet  of 
the  Sentimentalists,  is  Lamartine. 

But,  before  we  take  up  these  poets,  some  men- 
tion must  be  made  of  the  Hymn  of  Revolution,  La 
Marseillaise,  and  its  author,  Rouget  de  Lisle.  In 
the  year  1792,  a  young  officer  of  engineers,  who  had 
been  a  teacher  of  music,  was  urged  by  the  Mayor 
of  Strasbourg,  a  noble  Alsatian,  the  Baron  Dietrich, 
to  compose  a  patriotic  song  for  the  ceremonies 
about  to  be  observed  in  that  city.  He  composed  it 
that  night,  both  words  and  music,  and  called  it 
Chant  de  Guerre  de  I'Armee  du  Rhin.  It  was  sung 
with  great  enthusiasm  by  the  volunteers;  but  the 
song  did  not  make  its  way  to  Paris,  until  Barbaroux 
and  the  young  men  of  Marseille  poured  into  Paris, 
chanting  it.  The  Parisians  named  it  the  "Mar- 
seillaise Hymn."  Heine  wrote  of  this  song,  during 
the  revolutionary  year  of  1830 : 

"  A  strong  joy  seizes  me,  as  I  sit  writing.  Music 
resounds  under  my  window,  and  in  the  elegiac  rage  of 
its  large  melody,  I  recognize  that  hymn  with  which  hand- 
some Barbaroux  and  his  companions  once  greeted  the 
city  of  Paris.  What  a  song!  It  thrills  me  with  fiery 
delight.  It  kindles  within  me  the  glowing  star  of  enthu- 
siasm, and  the  swift  rocket  of  satire.  Swelling,  burning 
torrents  of  song  rush  from  the  heights  of  freedom,  in 
streams  as  bold  as  those  with  which  the  Ganges  leap 
from  the  heights  of  Himalaya !  I  can  write  no  more. 
This  song  intoxicates  my  brain.  Louder  and  nearer 
advances  the  powerful  chorus — Aux  armes,  citoyens  \  " 


Poets  and  Play  writers.  281 

It  is  indeed  a  martial  chant  of  wonderful  power. 
Few  songs  have  so  stirred  the  souls  of  men. 

"When  we  come  to  Beranger,  we  find  that  he  is  to 
be  viewed  under  two  aspects,  as  a  political  power,  and 
as  a  poet.  We  have  already  seen  how  strong  a 
force  was  arrayed  against  Bourbonism  in  the  par- 
liamentary eloquence  of  such  men  as  Constant^ 
Foy,  and  Royer-Collard,  by  the  socialist  ferment, 
and  by  the  stinging  pamphlets  of  Courier  and  De 
Cormenin.  But  the  songs  of  Beranger  made  their 
work  tenfold  easier  by  creating  a  political  atmos- 
phere in  which  the  fire  of  free  speech  could  live. 

Pierre  Jean  de  Beranger  (1780-1857)  was  born 
at  Paris  in  the  house  of  his  mother's  father,  a 
tailor  in  the  Rue  Montorgueil.  He  seems  to  have 
been  early  indoctrinated  in  republican  principles  by 
his  aunt  with  whom  he  lived  fora  time  at  Peronne. 
A  born  song- wri tor,  he  early  began  to  pour  forth 
his  thoughts  and  fancies  in  verse.  His  songs  not 
finding  a  market,  he  sent  some  of  them  to  Lucien 
Bonaparte,  already  famous  for  his  devotion  to  liter- 
ature. By  him  he  was  warmly  encouraged  and 
helped  in  the  most  delicate  manner,  for  which  Be- 
ranger was  always  deeply  grateful.  By  Desaugiers, 
the  then  acknowledged  lyrist  of  France,  who  recog- 
nized his  merit,  he  was  introduced  to  the  choice 
spirits  of  the  day,  constituting  the  Caveait,  a  social 
club  of  poets,  dramatists,  journalists,  painters,  and 
musicians,  meeting  at  a  cafe  near  the  Palais  Royal. 
This  was  in  1809.  Desangiers  had  read  Beranger's 
little  satire,  Le  Roi  tfYvetot,  and  predicted  his 
future  fame.  By  Lucien  Bonaparte's  influence, 
Beranger  received  a  small  governmental  appoint- 
ment which  gave  him  a  sufficient  support  and  left 
him  leisure  for  literary  work.  During  the  Hun- 
dred Days,  Napoleon  offered  him  the  post  of  censor, 
but  this  he  declined. 

In  1815,  he  published  his  first  collection  of  songs, 
which  brought  him  at  once  great  popularity. 
When  he  next  published,  some  of  his  songs  brought 


282  French  Literature. 

down  upon  him  the  vengeance  of  the  government. 
One  in  particular,  Les  Adieux  a  la  Gloire,  Decembre 
1830,  was  too  bitter  not  to  awaken  the  resentment 
of  the  Ministry.  He  was  sentenced  to  three 
months'  imprisonment  in  the  debtor's  prison  of 
Sainte-Pelagie  and  to  pay  a  fine  of  live  hundred 
francs.  His  works,  however,  were  so  popular  as  to 
yield  profits  which  fully  indemnified  him  for  all 
losses.  His  next  publication  brought  him  again 
under  the  frown  of  the  government.  This  time  his 
sentence  was  nine  months  in  the  prison  of  La  Force 
and  a  fine  of  ten  thousand  francs.  His  friends  paid 
the  fine,  and  the  government  only  succeeded  in 
advertising  him  as  a  political  martyr.  The  songs 
of  Beranger  became  a  great  power  in  France  and 
one  of  the  agencies  which  expelled  the  Bourbons 
for  the  second  time. 

Under  Louis  Philippe,  Beranger's  friends  became 
the  rulers  of  the  state.  But  the  poet  refused  to 
profit  by  the  change.  It  was  an  age  of  literary 
statesmen,  and  Beranger  was  one  of  the  very  few 
men  of  literary  fame  who  did  not  take  the  political 
fever.  His  publisher,  Perrotin,  treated  him  gener- 
ously, and  the  poet  lived  at  his  ease  and  was  con- 
tent. After  the  Kevolution  of  1848,  he  was  elected 
a  member  of  the  Constituent  Assembly,  but  he 
soon  resigned  this  public  trust.  When  Louis  Na- 
poleon overthrew  the  republic,  feeling  how  much 
he  owed  to  the  work  Beranger  had  done  in  keeping 
the  memory  of  the  first  Empire  in  the  hearts  of  the 
people,  he  urged  the  poet  to  accept  some  reward  at 
his  hands.  But  Beranger,  though  tempted  by  the 
charming  importunity  of  the  Empress  Eugenie, 
resolutely  kept  his  independence.  He  had  not  flat- 
tered the  first  Emperor  during  the  time  of  his 
power,  and  he  refused  to  bind  himself  in  his  old 
age  to  the  support  of  the  nephew.  He  died  at  the 
ripe  old  age  of  seventy-five,  honored  at  the  last  by 
a  funeral  escort  of  a  hundred  thousand  men  in 


Poets  and  Playwriters.  283 

arms,  the  government  fearing  the  excitement  of  the 
people  on  such  an  occasion. 

His  songs  are  of  many  kinds,  the  frivolous  and 
impure,  the  deeply  feeling  and  impassioned,  the  gay 
and  joyous,  the  keenly  satirical,  the  tender,  and  the 
lofty  in  tone.  Sometimes  he  sings  his  country's 
glory  and  misfortunes,  the  grandeur  of  the  Empire, 
and  the  woeful  fall  of  the  soldier  Emperor.  Some- 
times his  strain  is  of  liberty  and  equality,  the  rights 
of  man,  individualized  into  the  right  of  the  French- 
man to  rule  himself.  Sometimes  his  theme  is  purely 
of  practical  politics  under  a  corrupt  and  corrupting 
government,  and  takes  the  form  of  a  bitter  satire 
like  Monsieur  Judas.  Sometimes  his  songs  are  gay, 
sprightly,  and  humorous,  such  as  Roger  Bonttmps 
or  Le  Petit  Homme  Gris.  Sometimes  the  sharns 
and  oppressions  of  the  passing  time  make  every 
line  thrill  with  revolutionary  throbs.  His  higher 
strains  are  real  odes.  Nothing  can  be  finer  than 
Mon  Ame,  or  Le  Dieu  des  Bonnes  Gens,  or  Le  Cinq 
Mai,  or  La  Bonne  Vieille,  or  Mon  Habit.  Such  noble 
effusions  condone  the  offense  of  his  shocking  Madame 
Greyoire,  Ma  Grand 'mere,  and  similiar  outrages  on 
decency. 

He  knew  what  he  could  do,  and  wisely  confined 
himself  to  that.  When  urged  by  Lebrun  to  apply 
for  a  chair  in  the  Academy,  he  declined  in  a  grace- 
ful letter  in  which  he  said  :  "I  am  only  a  singer, 
gentlemen;  let  me  die  a  singer."  It  would  have 
been  better  for  his  fame,  had  he  restricted  himself 
to  even  less  than  what  he  could  do,  and  blotted 
many  a  ribald  song  before  it  reached  the  hand  of 
the  printer.  His  works  furnish  an  apt  illustration 
of  the  truth,  that  there  are  cases  in  which  a  part  is 
greater  than  the  whole. 

Lamartine  was  a  literary  worker  of  greater  pre- 
tensions, but  the  quality  of  his  work  was  neither  so 
fine  nor  so  strong.  Still  his  writings  were  im- 
mensely popular  in  their  day,  and  have  warm  ad- 
mirera  even  in  this  generation.  In  spite,  too,  of  a 


284  French  Literature. 

taint  of  vanity  which  was  his  most  marked  weak- 
ness, his  character  was  a  right  noble  one. 

Alphonse  de  Lamartine  (1790-1869)  was  born  at 
Macon.  In  his  Memoirs  he  gives  a  charming  recital 
of  the  simple  home-life  in  which  he  grew  up,  and  of 
the  troubles  which  his  family  underwent  during  the 
Keign  of  Terror.  He  traveled  in  Italy  in  his 
youth,  and  again  after  the  fall  of  Napoleon.  In 
1820,  the  publication  of  lui&Meditattons  Poetiques 
won  him  renown  and  a  position  on  the  staff  of  the 
French  embassy  at  Naples,  and,  later,  at  Florence. 
He  married  an  English  lady ;  published  his  Nou~ 
velles  Meditations  Poetiques,  his  Mori  de  Socrate,  and 
his  Dernier  Chant  de  Childe  Harold;  fought  a  duel 
with  Colonel  Pepe ;  produced  his  Harmonies  Poe- 
tiques et  Religieuses ;  and  travelled  in  the  East.  On 
his  return  from  the  Levant,  he  entered  public  life, 
became  a  distinguished  orator  in  the  Chamber, 
published  in  his  Voyage  en  Orient,  an  account  of  his 
Eastern  pilgrimage,  and  put  forth  successively  his 
narrative  poems,  Jocelyn  and  La  Chute  d'un  Ange, 
and  his  confused  and  rhetorical  Histoire  des  Giron- 
dins.  When  the  Revolution  of  1848  came,  he  was 
perhaps  the  foremost  man  in  France ;  but  he  nobly 
threw  away  his  popularity  by  refusing  to  authorize 
the  violence  of  the  anarchists  of  that  critical  period. 
The  overthrow  of  the  republic  by  Louis  Napoleon 
put  an  end  to  his  public  career.  His  other  works 
were  his  Elegies,  Epitres,  Confidences,  Histoire  de  la 
Revolution  franchise,  Cour  familier  de  la  Litterature, 
Fior  d'Aliza,  and  Histoire  de  la  Restauration. 

There  is  undoubtedly  both  passion  and  imagina- 
tion in  his  poems,  and  the  lyric  vein  is  strong  in 
him.  But  to  a  foreign  ear  the  sentiment  does  seem 
overstrained,  arid  the  tender  melancholy  too  often 
savors  of  affectation.  To  the  modern  Frenchman  the 
muse  of  Lamartine  seems  almost  as  insipid  as  to  the 
foreigner;  and  the  criticism  of  our  day  detects  a 
flavor  in  almost  all  the  fine  writing  admired  by 
that  generation  which  our  taste  stamps  as  "  not 


Poets  and  Playv:riters.  285 

genuine."  His  verse,  however,  has  great  charm 
from  its  melody  and  its  elegant  smoothness.  The 
prevailing  element  in  his  earlier  poems  was  their 
deep  seriousness,  their  expression  of  religious 
ecstasy  in  the  presence  of  nature's  loveliness — in 
fine,  the  blending  of  religious  sentiment  with 
aesthetic  sentiment,  both  very  vague  and  somewhat 
crude.  Such  are  Le  Lac,  Le  Vallon,  Le  Golfe  de 
Baia,  and  Le  Temple.  The  success  of  Jocetyn 
adds  one  more  instance  to  the  many  proofs 
literature  furnishes  us  of  the  charm  for  the  ordi- 
nary reader  a  story  has  that  is  told  in  verse. 
The  taste  for  romance  and  the  taste  for  poetry 
are  gratified  at  the  same  time.  Walter 
Scott's,  Moore's  and  Byron's  romantic  poems,  Mrs. 
Browning's  Aurora  Leiyh,  and  the  younger  Bul- 
wer's  Lucile  are  all  evidences  of  the  value  of  a  dis- 
tinct story  in  making  poetry  acceptable  to  the 
masses.  For  this  peason,  Tenm-son's  Princess  and 
Idyls  of  the  King  will  always  be  the  most  popular 
of  his  poems. 

By  different  sections  of  the  public  both  Beranger 
and  Lamartine  were  idolized  during  a  great  part  ol 
their  lives.  But,  if  Lamartine's  fame  as  a  poet  has 
undergone  great  obscuration  for  a  number  of  years, 
the  day  will  never  come  when  his  conduct  during 
the  Revolution  of  1848  shall  not  be  set  down  to  hia 
honor  as  man  and  patriot.  Of  that  splendid 
action  Bulwer-Lytton  happily  says: 

"  When  Alphonse  Lamartine,  by  an  immortal  speech, 
in  which  there  is  no  wit  and  no  sparkle,  struck  down  tc 
his  feet  the  red  flag,  we  recognize  intuitively  the  differ, 
ence  between  the  maxim-maker's  knowledge  of  the  con. 
ventional  world  [He  has  been  speaking  of  La  Rochefou. 
cauld's  cynical  Maxims]  and  the  poet-orator's  knowledge 
of  the  universal  human  heart.  Honor  to  Alphonse 
Lamartine's  knowledge  of  the  heart  in  that  moment 
which  saved  the  dignity  of  France  and  the  peace  ot 
Europe,  no  matter  what  were  hi.s  defects  in  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  world — defects  by  which  rulers  destined  to 


286  French  Literature. 

replace  him   learned  to   profit !     Honor  to  that  one  tri- 
umph of  poetry  put  into  action!  " 

The  passion  of  regret  for  the  glories  which  France 
had  won  under  the  star  of  Napoleon,  and  lost  with 
the  return  of  the  Bourbons,  had  inspired  Beranger 
to  fire  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen  with  indigna- 
tion against  the  new  order  of  things.  The  same 
impulse  produced  the  Messeniennes  of  Delavigne, 
and  the  same  popular  sympathy  went  out  to  meet 
and  to  welcome  his  strains. 

Jean  Fra^ois  Casimir  Delavigne  (1793-1843) 
was  born  at  Havre.  He  published  his  elegies  when 
the  soil  of  France  was  still  humbled  by  the  presence 
of  the  allied  armies,  borrovving  his  title  from  Bar- 
thelemy's  account  in  the  Voyage  (VAnacharsis  of 
how  Tyrtasus  had  stirred  the  souls  of  the  Lacede- 
monians in  their  wars  with  the  Messenians.  De 
Vericour  says  of  these  elegies,  that  many  of  them 
are  remarkable  for  their  rich  coloring,  splendid 
imagery,  energy  of  thought,  and  metrical  harmony; 
and  he  specifies  the  Waterloo,  Parthenope,  and 
Napoleon  as  among  the  finest.  La  Parisienne  was 
written  under  the  impulse  of  enthusiasm  awakened 
by  the  July  revolution.  Casimir  Delavigne  refused 
employment  under  Louis  Philippe,  and  devoted 
himself  to  the  production  of  plays.  The  chief  of 
these  were  Les  Vepres  Siciliennes,  Les  Comediens, 
Marino  Faliero,  Louis  XI.,  Les  Enfants  d1  Edouard, 
Don  Juan  d'Autriclie,  and  La  Fille  du  Cid.  In 
his  dramatic  works  he  tried  to  blend  the  principles 
and  spirit  of  the  classic  tragedy  with  those  of  the 
romantic  drama.  But  Victor  Hugo,  Alexandre 
Dumas,  and  Alfred  de  Vigny  had,  after  the  Kevolu- 
tion  of  1830,  boldly  forsaken  the  old  school  and 
declared  war  with  its  whole  spirit  and  method,  and 
put  upon  the  stage  dramas  conceived  in  the  roman- 
tic spirit ;  and  the  efforts  of  Casimir  Delavigne  were 
not  able  to  restore  the  popularity  of  the  older  sys- 
tem. He  was  successful,  however,  in  comedy.  His 


Poets  and  Play  writers.  287 

$cole  aes  Vieillards,  brilliantly  performed  by  Talma 
and  Mademoiselle  Mars,  brought  him  a  triumph, 
which  ought  to  have  tempted  him  to  renewed  efforts 
in  that  branch  of  literary  art.  Retiring  to  Lyon 
for  change  of  air,  when  his  health  began  to  give 
way,  he  died  in  that  city.  After  his  death  ap- 
peared his  Ballades  italiennes,  which  revealed  the 
fine  lyrical  ability  he  possessed. 

Among  the  poets  of  this  period  must  also  be 
named  Madame  Desbordes-Valmore  (1787-1859), 
whose  literary  labors  comprised  elegiac  and  idyllic 
verse,  fables,  and  romances.  Tenderness  and 
pathos,  gentle  piety,  and  sweet  consolation  are  her 
special  qualities.  Her  romance,  Une  Raillerie  de 
V Amour,  has  its  scene  in  the  days  of  the  Empire. 
Others  were  Les  Veillees  des  Antilles  and  IJ Atelier 
d"un  Peintre.  The  poems  were  published  under 
the  titles  of  Elegies  et  Romances,  Pleurs,  and  Pau- 
vres  Fleurs. 

Alexandre  Soumet  (1788-1845),  another  poet  of 
this  period,  produced  elegies,  tragedies,  and  epics. 
La  Pauvre  Fille  is  considered  a  masterpiece  in 
delicacy  of  sentiment  and  beauty  of  style.  His 
tragedies  were  Saiil,  Clytemnestre,  Jeanne  d*Arc, 
Elisabeth  de  France,  Cleopatre,  and  Norma.  His 
epics  were  Jeanne  d'Arc  and  La  Divine  Epopee. 

Alexandre  Guiraud  (1788-1847)  wrote  a  great 
number  of  tragedies,  the  finest  of  which  was  his 
Macchabees  ou  le  f  Martyre.  He  also  produced 
Pof-mes  et  Chants  Eleyiaques. 

fimile  Deschamps,  who  was  born  at  Bourges  in 
1791,  translated  some  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  Schil- 
ler's "Bell,"  and  other  works,  and  published  a  book  of 
original  poems,  Les  Poesies  des  Creches,  which  are 
graceful  and  elegant. 

Arsene  Ancelot  (1794-1854),  born  at  Havre, 
was  successful  on  the  stage  with  his  plays  of  Louis 
IX.,  Le  Maire  du  Palais,  Fiesque,  and  Olga.  He 
gained  some  distinction  also  by  his  poem  of  Marie 
de  Brabant,  his  romance  of  Lllomme  du  Monde, 


288  French  Literature. 

and  his  Epitres  Familttres.  His  style  is  'pure  and 
elegant. 

Jean  Eeboul  (1796-1864),  the  baker-poet  of 
Nimes,  was  a  follower  of  Lamartine.  Besides  his 
Odes  and  his  Elegies,  he  produced  a  poem  in  ten 
cantos,  called  Le  Dernier  Jour  du  Monde. 

Madame  Amable  Tastu  was  b9rn  at  Metz  in 
1798.  She  won  fame  first  by  her  Eloge  de  Madame 
de  Seviyne.  Her  Education  Maternelle  and  her 
Histoire  de  la  Litterature  have  also  taken  rank 
among  the  standard  works  for  the  young.  Her 
finest  poems  were  La  Vieille  de  Noel,  L'Etoile  de  la 
Lyre,  Le  Retour  h  la  Chapelle,  and  Le  Dernier  Jour 
de  VAnnee,  the  last  being  regarded  by  French  critics 
as  a  masterpiece  of  touching  thought  expressed  in 
most  harmonious  verse. 

But  it  was  the  romantic  school  of  poets  who 
carried  everything  before  them  in  the  great  revolu- 
tion which  literary  taste  began  to  undergo  about 
the  time  of  the  political  revolution  of  1830.  The 
chief  of  these  were  De  Vigny,  Hugo,  and  Dumas ; 
and  the  stage  was  their  field  of  battle  with  the  old 
classic  taste. 

The  new  school,  as  has  been  said,  inspired  by 
the  strong  spirit  of  reaction  against  the  taste  of  the 
old  Bourbon  period  and  by  the  study  of  English 
literature,  insisted  upon  the  free  representation  of 
mingled  comedy  and  tragedy,  as  they  are  found  in 
life.  They  also  forsook  the  fields  of  ancient  his- 
tory and  mythology,  which  had  furnished  materials 
for  most  of  the  productions  of  the  earlier  play- 
writers,  and  ransacked  all  history  for  suitable  dra- 
matic situations.  Unfortunately,  there  was  too 
often  a  preference  for  the  horrible  and  the  grotesque. 

Alfred  Victor,  Comte  de  Vigny  (1797-1863) 
was  born  at  Loches  in  Touraine.  He  served  in 
the  army  for  a  time;  but,  marrying  in  1826  a 
wealthy  Englishwoman,  he  withdrew  from  the  ser- 
vice and  gave  his  time  to  litera-ture.  His  taste  is 
pure  and  refined.  In  the  war  with  the  classic 


Poets  and  Play  writers.  289 

school,  his  course  was  moderate.  Before  1830,  he 
had  published  several  volumes  of  poems  and  his 
famous  historical  romance  of  Cinq-Mars.  After 
that  period,  he  published  one  or  two  novels;  but, 
in  the  year  that  followed  the  Revolution,  he  put  on 
the  stage  a  play  which  had  a  powerful  influence  in 
winning  popularity  for  the  romantic  drama.  This 
was  his  Marechale  (TAncre,  the  scene  of  which  be- 
longs to  the  same  period  as  that  of  his  romance  of 
Cinq- Mars — the  age  of  Louis  XIII.  He  also  pro- 
duced Le  More  de  Venise,  taken  from  "Othello," 
and  Chatterton,  founded  on  his  story  of  Stello  ou 
Les  Diables  Bleus. 

Cinq  Mars  is  an  able  delineation  of  the  condition 
of  France  under  the  rule  of  Richelieu,  and  still 
retains  its  place  among  the  recognized  classics  of 
French  literature.  De  Vigny's  Servitude  et  Gran- 
deur Militaire,  hovtever,  is  regarded  by  the  critics 
as  a  still  abler  work  than  Cinq-Mars.  It  is  a  col- 
lection of  stories  illustrative  of  military  life,  and  is 
full  of  admirable  reflections.  It  is  tinged  too  with, 
a  tone  of  melancholy  which  makes  it  very  attrac- 
tive to  meditative  minds.  Another  work  of  De 
Yigny's  was  his  Consultations  du  Docteur  Noir. 
After  his  death  some  poems  of  his  entitled  Les 
Destinees  were  published. 

But  the  foremost  spirit  of  the  romantic  school 
was  that  versatile  writer,  Victor  Hugo,  poet,  drama- 
tist, romancer,  pamphleteer,  and  politician,  who 
has  been  well  styled  "half-charlatan,  half  genius." 

Victor  Marie,  Vicomte  Hugo,  was  born  at  Besan- 
9011  in  1802.  His  father  was  a  soldier  of  Napoleon. 
His  mother  was  a  native  of  La  Vendee  and  hence  a 
devoted  royalist.  Victor  Hugo  was  early  in  the 
field  as  a  poet.  His  genius  being  essentially  lyric, 
his  first  important  productions  were  Odes  et  Ballades, 
the  Odes  being  royalist  in  tone  and  the  Ballads 
medieval  in  subject.  To  these  succeeded — with 
many  other  works  intervening — his  poems  of  Les 
Orientales,  Les  Chants  du  Crepuscule,  Les  Rayons 
19 


290  French  Literature. 

et  les  Ombres,  Les  Voix  Interieures,  and  Les  Feuilles 
cFAutomne.  Bold  in  imagery,  picturesque,  defiant 
of  all  the  old  rules  of  restriction,  these  poems  had  a 
singular  effect  upon  the  age  and  did  more  than  per- 
haps anything  else,  except  his  plays,  to  secure  the 
triumph  of  the  principles  of  the  romantic  school. 
His  play  of  Marion  Delorme,  which  appeared  on  the 
eve  of  the  Revolution  of  1830,  was  the  strongest 
agent  in  bringing  about  this  change  in  public  taste. 
He  had  before  put  on  the  stage  Cromwell  and  Her- 
nani ;  but  these  were  greatly  inferior  dramas  to 
Marion  Delorme.  His  other  plays  were  Le  Roi 
s'amuse,  Ruy  Bias,  Marie  Tudor,  Lucrece  Borge, 
Angelo,  Les  Burgraves,  and  Torquemada,  in  all  of 
which  he  takes  great  liberties  with  history  and  is 
often  offensive  to  common  decency  of  feeling,  but 
never  fails  in  a  certain  spasmodic  power  which 
strikes  the  imagination.  The  evident  straining  after 
effect ;  the  delight  in  conceiving  monstrosities ;  the 
crudity  of  perpetual  antithesis  in  style,  character, 
and  situation;  the  lavish  use  of  lurid  tints;  the 
tedious  working  over  and  over  the  meaningless 
parts  of  the  picture,  and  putting  in  minute  and  in- 
significant details,  are  blots  that  must  make  the 
greater  part  of  his  work  forfeit  the  title  of  really 
high  art. 

His  romances  were  written  on  the  same  system. 
Originality  was  too  often  sought  at  the  expense  of 
good  taste.  Yet  there  is  power  in  them  all,  a  wild 
erratic  genius  that  one  must  admire  in  some  sort, 
even  while  condemning.  The  chief  of  these  were 
Hans  d'lslande,  a  grotesque  romance  of  the  North- 
ern regions;  Les  Derniers  Jours  d'un  Condamne  ; 
that  great,  wild  creation,  Notre-Dame  de  Paris,  a 
romance  of  Paris  in  the  fifteenth  century,  a  real 
prose- poem  of  fantastic  but  wonderfully  picturesque 
conceptions  ;  Claude  Gueux  ;  Bug-Jargal,  an  amus- 
ingly incredible  negro  story  ;  the  five-fold  romance 
of  the  angelic  convict,  Jean  Valjean,  Les  Miserables  ; 
L'Homme  Qui  Bit ;  Quatre-vingt-treize ;  and  Les 


Poets  and  Ptaytoriters.  291 

Travailleurs  de  la  Mer.  In  spite  of  the  extrava- 
gance of  thought,  conception,  and  language,  these 
are  all  works  of  remarkable  power. 

Meanwhile,  he  was  living  a  life  of  mingled  storm 
and  sunshine.  Louis  Philippe  made  him  a  Peer  of 
France.  But  he  sympathized  with  the  Revolution 
of  1848,  and  became  one  of  the  leaders  in  the  short- 
lived republic.  Prince  Napoleon  warned  him  of 
the  designs  of  Louis  Napoleon,  and  urged  him  and 
his  party  to  take  measures  to  prevent  the  coup 
d'etat.  But  Victor  Hugo  declined  to  move,  on  the 
ground  that  illegal  measures  to  prevent  illegality 
are  not  justifiable.  The  threatened  evil  came,  and 
Hugo  remaining  irreconcilable  was  banished  by  the 
Emperor.  The  exiled  poet  went  to  live  in  the  isle 
of  Jersey,  and  from  that  retreat  launched  the  bit- 
terest pamphlets  against  the  successful  criminal. 
Napoleon  le  Petit,  the  book  of  poems  called  Les 
Chdtiments,  and  EHistoire  (Tun  Crime  were  all  in- 
spired by  his  wrath  at  this  event.  On  the  fall  of 
the  Second  Empire,  he  came  back  to  France. 

Notes  made  upon  his  original  manuscripts — which 
he  has  carefully  preserved — show,  it  is  said,  that 
Victor  Hugo  has  always  written  with  great  rapidity. 
His  drama  of  Cromwell,  written  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
five,  was  finished  in  three  months.  Notre-Dame  de 
Paris  cost  him  four  months  and  a  half.  Marion 
Delorme  was  written  in  twenty-four  days  ;  Hernani, 
in  twenty-six ;  Le  Roi  s'amuse,  in  twenty ;  Ruy 
Bias,  in  two  months  and  three  days ;  and  Les  Bur- 
graves,  in  thirty-nine  days.  His  death  made  a 
greater  impression  than  that  of  any  man  of  our 
time. 

The  success  of  the  romantic  school  on  the  stage 
was  aided  materially  by  Vitet's  historical  plays, 
written  for  the  closet  and  not  intended  to  be 
acted. 

Louis  Vitet  was  born  at  Paris  in  1801.  His 
fame  rests  chiefly  on  his  art-criticism,  in  which  his 
excellent  taste  and  the  clearness  and  precision  of 


292  French  Literature. 

his  style  make  him  an  acknowledged  master.  He 
published  also — besides  his  Histoire  de  Dieppe  and 
his  Vie  de  Le  Sueur,  a  drama  of  the  time  of  the 
League,  called  Les  Barricades,  in  which  Henri 
III.  and  the  Due  de  Guise  appear  as  promi- 
nent characters  ;  another  drama  of  the  same  period, 
called  Les  Etats  de  Blois ;  and  still  another,  called 
La  Mort  de  Henri  III. 

Among  the  minor  poets  of  the  period  before  the 
Second  Empire  must  be  briefly  named  Porch  at, 
author  of  the  dramas,  Jeanne  d1  Arc  and  Winlcelried; 
the  novels,  Les  Colons  du  Village  and  Trois  Mois 
sous  la  Neige ;  and  poems  published  under  the  title 
Fables  et  Paraboles. 

Under  the  same  head  comes  Julien  Auguste 
Pelage  Brizeux  (1803-1858),  author  of  Marie,  a 
graceful  fiction  in  which  the  simple  life  and  pic- 
turesque features  of  the  Breton  peasantry  are  por- 
trayed, and  of  a  poem  called  Les  Bretons. 

Here  also  comes  Joseph  Mery  (1798--1866),  born 
at  Marseille,  an  improvise!1  of  odes,  satires,  romances, 
dramas,  comedies,  and  criticisms.  He  worked  at 
first  in  concert  with  Burthelemy.  His  natural  gifts 
were  remarkable,  but  he  lacked  the  patience  to 
produce  finished  works.  His  brightest  productions 
were  Nuits  au  Glaises,  Heva,  La  Guerre  du  Nizam, 
Les  Confessions  de  Marion  Delorme,  Nuits  d1  Orient, 
Un  Carnaval  de  Paris  and  Poesies  intimes. 

By  the  side  of  these  must  be  placed  Edgard 
Quinet,  born  in  1803,  translator  of  Herder,  author 
of  an  ambitious  epic  novel  called  Ahasverus  and  a 
poem  entitled  Napoleon,  neither  of  which  met  with 
marked  success.  He  attained  distinction,  however, 
as  a  historian  by  his  work,  Les  Epoques  chevaler- 
esques  du  XI Ie  Si&cle. 

It  was  to  the  elder  Dumas  that  Hugo  and  De 
Vigny  owed  most  for  able  help  in  fighting  out  the 
battle  of  romanticism  with  classicism.  By  himself, 
and  also  with  the  aid  of  co-workers,  he  issued  a 
host  of  pieces  for  the  stage,  as  well  as  of  romances, 


Poets  and  Play  writers.  29$ 

wonderful  in  their  vivacity  and  brilliancy,  and  by 
reason  of  their  sensational  incidents,  lucidity,  lively 
coloring,  and  brisk  dialogue  admirably  suited  to 
win  popularity. 

Alexandre  Dumas  (1803-1870)  was  the  son  of 
General  Dumas  and  the  grandson  of  the  Marquis 
de  la  Pailleterie  and  a  negro  woman.  He  was 
born  at  Villers-Cotterets.  His  first  appearance 
as  a  writer  was  in  a  volume  of  Nouvelles ;  but  it 
was  three  years  later  and  just  on  the  eve  of  the 
Revolution  of  1830  that  he  acquired  fame  by  the 
production  on  the  stage  of  his  first  and  best  play, 
Henri  III.  et  sa  Cour.  The  characters  are  presented 
in  this  piece  with  great  force  and  originality,  and 
the  plot  is  admirably  developed.  From  this  time 
he  became  a  great  man  in  the  eyes  of  the  Parisians, 
and  one  of  the  greatest  of  men  in  his  own  estima- 
tion— for  his  vanity  was  prodigious. 

He  produced  also  for  the  stage  Antony,  Christine, 
Therese,  Anyele,  ifean,  Don  Juan  de  Marana,  Calig- 
ula. Some  of  these  plays  are  wretched  stuff,  and 
others  are  stolen  goods.  His  system  of  using  hack- 
writers to  work  up  a  book,  which  he  would  then 
embellish  with  some  of  his  characteristic  passages, 
lifted  into  gaiety  by  sheer  flow  of  animal  spirits, 
enabled  him  to  flood  the  market  with  literature  of 
very  varying  quality.  His  best  romances  were 
Les  Trois  Moitsquetaires.  Le  Comte  de  Monte-  Or  is  to, 
and  La  Reine  Maryot.  Thackeray  speaks  warmly 
of  these  books,  as  engaging  companions  of  the 
youthful  imagination. 

"  Of  your  heroic  heroes,"  he  says,  "  I  think  our 
friend  Monseigneur  Athos,  Count  de  la  Fere,  is  my  favor- 
ite. I  have  read  about  him  from  sunrise  to  sunset  with 
the  utmost  contentment  of  mind.  He  has  passed  through 
how  many  volumes  ?  Forty  ?  Fifty  ?  I  wish  for  my  part 
there  were  a  hundred  more,  and  would  never  tire  of  him 
rescuing  prisoners,  punishing  ruffians,  and  running  scoun- 
drels through  the  midriff  with  his  most  graceful  rapier.  Ah, 
Athos,  Porthos,  and  Araniis,  you  are  a  magnificent  trio." 


294  French  Literature. 

As  to  Dumas'  Memoir  es,  the  reader  will  find  those 
pleasantly  garrulous  and  amusingly  coxcombical 
revelations  as  entertaining  as  his  romances.  His 
vivacious  and  slightly  impudent  manner  makes 
him  always  amusing. 

But  of  all  writers  for  the  stage  under  the  restored 
Bourbons  and  the  Second  Empire,  Scribe  was  the 
most  sparkling  and  the  most  unwearied.  His 
pieces  were  chiefly  vaudevilles;  and,  as  he  had 
many  collaborators,  they  were  produced  with  amaz- 
ing rapidity.  The  plots  were  taking;  the  dialogue, 
quick,  light,  and  bright;  the  air  of  the  scene  deli- 
cately mocking;  and  there  was  just  enough  sensi- 
bility to  move  a  merry  audience  to  a  momentary 
tenderness  without  exciting  deep  emotion. 

Augustin  Eugene  Scribe  (1791-1861)  was  born 
at  Paris.  His  most  striking  pieces  were  Bertrand 
et  Raton,  Le  Manage  d1  Argent,  Une  Chame,  Le 
Verre  dEan.,  La  Camaraderie,  La  Bataille  de 
Dames,  Adrienne  Lecouvreur,  Les  Contes  de  la 
Reine  de  Navarre,  and  Les  Doigts  de  Fee.  In  the 
composition  of  more  than  four  hundred  pieces 
which  bear  his  name  he  was  aided  by  Brazier, 
Carmouche,  Delavigne,  Delestre,  Durnersan,  Dupin^ 
Duveyrier,  Legouve,  Lemoine,  Mazeres,  Mesleville, 
Eougemont,  Varner,  and  others.  He  wrote  also 
the  libretti  for  a  number  of  operas,  besides  writing 
several  novels. 

Among  the  poets  who  stood  side  by  side  with 
Hugo  in  the  struggle  for  the  principles  of  the  ro- 
mantic school  was  Henri  Auguste  Barbier  (1805- 
1882),  born  at  Paris.  He  came  into  notice  just 
after  the  Revolution  of  1830  by  the  publication 
of  his  lambes,  satirical  poems  of  great  wildness  and 
vehemence.  Later,  he  put  forth,  in  his  Pianto,  a 
harmonious  and  elegant  poem,  his  impressions  of 
Italy.  To  this  succeeded  his  Lazare. 

Leon  Gozlan  (1806-1866),  born  at  Marseille,  may 
be  classed  among  the  play  writers,  as  he  produced 
many  dramas,  comedies,  and  vaudevilles,  which  were 


Poets  and  Playwriters.  295 

well  received.  He  was,  however,  also  the  author 
of  a  vast  number  of  novels  and  romances.  French 
critics  find  fault  with,  his  style,  as  injured  by  mere- 
tricious graces  to  an  extent  which  good  taste  must 
condemn. 

Madame  de  Girardin,  born  Delphine  Gay,  at  Aix- 
la-Chapelle  (180-1-1865),  is  another  who  may  be 
classed  among  the  contributors  to  the  literature  of 
the  stage,  although  she  won  fame  as  a  novelist  also. 
She  was  in  her  day  the  pet  of  French  literary  so- 
ciety, having  many  personal  charms,  not  the  least 
among  which  was  her  unaffected  simplicity  and 
sweetness  of  character.  Here  was  one  of  the  last 
of  the  salons,  after  her  marriage  with  the  journalist, 
fimile  de  Girardin.  Hugo,  Lamartine,  Dumas,  Sainte- 
Beuve,  Mery,  Gautier,  Sue,  and  Balzac  were  all  at  dif- 
ferent periods  frequenters  of  her  house.  She  gave 
to  the  theatre,  besides  lively  comedies  like  Le 
Chapeau  cfun  H&rloger,  one  piece  of  graceful  senti- 
ment and  a  quiet  vein  of  pathos,  which  still  keeps 
the  stage.  This  is  La  Joie  fait  Peur.  She  also 
published  a  collection  of  poems.  But  her  novels 
were  her  most  important  works.  Many  of  these 
were  solely  her  own  work ;  but  one,  La  Croix  de 
Berny,  she  wrote  in  concert  with  Gautier,  Mery, 
and  Sandeau.  Her  most  striking  romance  was  one 
entitled  Le  Lorgnon.  Her  Lettres  Parisiennes,  pub- 
lished, as  well  as  the  novels,  under  the  pseudonym 
of  the  Vicomte  de  Launay,  are  very  lively,  and  are 
regarded  as  giving  a  perfect  picture  of  French  so- 
ciety from  1836  to  1848. 

Both  Theophile  Gautier  and  Sainte-Beuve  were 
responsible  in  their  time  for  some  poetry ;  but  the 
one  is  so  much  better  known  as  a  story-teller  and 
the  other  as  a  critic,  that  they  hardly  belong  among 
the  poets.  The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  Edmond 
About,  his  failure  as  a  writer  of  comedy  and  his 
success  as  a  teller  of  stories  relegating  him  to 
another  part  of  this  work  than  this  which  treats  of 
playwriters. 


296  French  Literature. 

Ernest  Legouve  is  therefore  the  next  on  our  list. 
He  was  born  at  Paris  in  1807.  Alone,  or  in  con- 
cert with  others,  he  produced  a  number  of  success- 
ful dramatic  works,  of  which  the  most  striking  were 
Guerrero,  MMee,  and  Un  Jeune  Homme  qui  nefait 
JRien.  He  wrote  also  the  romances  of  Beatrix  and 
Edith  de  Falsen,  as  well  as  a  work  entitled  Histoire 
morale  des  Femmes. 

Gerard  de  Nerval  (1808-1855)  was  born  at  Paris, 
and  produced  Elegies  nationales  et  Satires  politiques, 
a  translation  of  "Faust,"  and,  in  prose,  his  Voyage 
en  Orient,  besides  some  romances. 

Charles  Lafont  (1809-1864)  was  born  at  Lie'ge. 
His  two  tragedies,  Ivan  de  Russie  and  Daniel,  were 
much  praised  for  elegance  of  style.  He  wrote 
also  a  poetic  drama  entitled  Un  Chef-d'oeuvre  in- 
connu,  some  vaudevilles,  and  his  Legendes  de  la 
Charite. 

Madame  Louise  Revoil-Colet  was  born  at  Aix  in 
1810.  Besides  publishing  a  great  many  romances, 
translations,  and  dramatic  pieces,  she  wrote  poetry 
of  graceful  elegance. 

Leonard  Sylvain  Jules  Sandeau  was  born  at 
Aubusson  in  1811.  He  began  his  literary  career  by 
working  in  concert  with  Madame  Dudevant,  and 
when  they  parted,  she  used  the  half  of  his  name  as 
her  nom  de  plume.  Besides  many  charming  ro- 
mances, he  wrote  a  great  number  of  able  comedies. 
The  principal  romances  of  his  workmanship  were 
Madame  de  Somerville,  Mademoiselle  de  la  Seigltire, 
Catherine,  Mariana,  Valcreuse,  Sacs  et  Parchemins, 
and  La  Maison  de  Penarvan.  The  best  comedies 
included  several  of  these  tales  dramatized,  and  also 
Le  Gendre  de  M.  Poirier. 

Victor  de  Laprade  was  born  at  Montbrison  in 
1812.  His  poems  were  a  collection  called  Odes  et 
Poemes,  the  chief  of  which  was  Psyche ;  another, 
called  Poemes  evangeliques  ;  and  still  another,  called 
Idylles  heroiques. 

Joseph  Autran  was  born  at  Marseille  in  1813. 


Poets  and  Playwriters.  297 

His  first  poem  was  an  ode  in  honor  of  Lamartine, 
entitled  Depart  pour  V  Orient.  His  later  poems 
were  Ludibria  Ventis,  Poemes  de  la  Mer,  Melianah, 
Laljoureurs  et  Soldats,  and  La  Vie  rurale.  His 
tragedy  of  La  Fille  d'Eschine  was  a  success.  He 
also  wrote  in  prose  a  work  called  Italie  et  Scmaine 
sainte  h  Rome. 

Madame  Anai's  Segalas  was  born  at  Paris  in 
1813.  Her  poetry  is  likened  by  the  critics  to  that 
of  Madame  Tastu. 

Fran9o'is  Ponsard  (1814-1867)  was  born  at 
Vienne  in  Dauphine.  His  first  publication  was  a 
translation  of  Byron's  "  Manfred."  He  next  wrote 
a  tragedy  called  Lucrtce,  which  was  brought  out  as 
a  re-action  in  the  classic  taste  against  the  romantic 
school.  It  had  a  great  success,  and  is  still  ranked 
as  a  standard  work.  Later,  he  produced  Aynh  de 
Meranie,  Charlotte  Corday,  and  a  comedy  called 
Horace  et  Lydie,  'to  which  Rachel's  acting  gave 
brilliant  success.  L'Honneur  et  T  Argent  again 
brought  fame  to  him  after  the  failure  of  his  tragedy 
of  Ulysse  and  his  poem  of  Hombre.  It  was  remark- 
able for  its  purity  and  high  tone.  His  comedy  of 
La  Bourse  was  too  hastily  produced,  and  did"  not 
sustain  the  reputation  he  had  won.  His  last  works 
were  Le  Lion  Amoureux  and  the  drama  of  Galilee. 

It  is  with  design  that  I  have  sketched  rapidly 
the  places  of  these  minor  poets  in  a  general  account 
of  French  literature  like  this,  before  taking  up 
Alfred  de  Musset,  who,  as  a  perfect  representative 
of  the  blase  type  of  brilliant  young  Frenchmen  of 
the  Restoration  period,  deserves  more  extended 
notice. 

Louis  Charles  Alfred  de  Musset  (1810-1857) 
was  born  at  Paris.  "At  twenty  he  came  before  the 
public  with  his  Conies  en  Vers,  which  at  once  gave 
him  high  rank  among  the  poets  of  his  day.  The 
sensuousness  of  these  poerns  was  as  noticeable  as 
their  elegance.  Later,  he  published  Nouvelles  in 
prose,  Comedies  et  Proverbes^  and  two  Recueih  de 


298  French  Literature. 

Poesies,  consisting  of  elegies,  tales,  satires,  songs, 
sonnets,  and  other  forms  of  verse.  His  comedies 
still  hold  the  stage  and  are  full  of  grace  and  wit. 
Few  writers  for  the  theatre  command  with  such 
ease  the  graceful  tone  of  the  best  society.  In 
skepticism,  and  license  he  has  been  compared  to 
Byron  and  to  the  younger  Bulwer;  but  none  deny 
the  exquisite  beauty,  tenderness,  and  power  of  the 
greater  part  of  what  he  has  written.  There  is  a 
quality  in  his  best  work,  hard  to  define  but  full  of 
attraction  to  the  cultivated  taste,  an  airy  lightness 
of  touch  with  the  suggestion  of  strength  in  its  very 
ease.  His  liaison  with  Madame  Dudevant,  and  its 
subsequent  rupture,  was  the  occasion  of  several 
books  on  both  sides  by  themselves  and  their  friends; 
but  the  literature  of  Elle  et  Lid  and  Lui  et  Elle  is 
not  particularly  edifying. 

Charles  Baudelaire  (1821-1867)  should  be  men- 
tioned along  with  De  Musset,  as  an  extreme  type 
of  the  same  pessimist  spirit.  He  was  the  chief  of 
those  poets  outside  of  society  who  delighted  in  the 
name  of  "  Bohemians."  There  is  a  sombre  beauty 
in  many  of  his  poems,  which  entitles  them,  in  spite 
of  their  grossness  and  affectation  of  diabolism,  to 
some  share  of  that  admiration  which  genius  in  any 
form  must  always  elicit.  He  had  a  great  admira- 
tion for  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  and  made  an  exceedingly 
able  translation  of  his  works. 

Octave  Feuillet,  one  of  the  most  delightful  of 
living  authors,  was  born  at  Saint-Lo  in  1812.  He 
has  been  best  known  in  this  country  as  a  romancer. 
But  he  has  also  been  brilliantly  successful  with 
comedies,  vaudevilles,  and  other  stage  pieces,  rival- 
ing Alfred  de  Musset  in  that  exquisite  grace  in 
which  he  excelled.  Feuillet's  finest  romances  were 
Bellah,  La  petite  Comtesse,  Le  Roman  d'un  Jeune 
Homme  Pauvre,  Sibylle,  M.  de  Camors,  and  Le 
Journal  cTune  Femme.  His  best  pieces  for  the 
stage  were  dramatizations  of  some  of  these  ro- 
mances, and  La  Nuit  Terrible,  Le  Bourgeois  de 


Poets  and  Playwriters.  299 

Pome,  La  Crise,  Peril  en  la  Demeure,  La  Fee,  Le 
Village,  Dalila,  La  Tentation,  Montjoye,  La  Belle 
au  Bois  Dormant,  Le  Cas  de  Conscience,  Julie,  and 
La  Cle  d'Or.  His  latest  play,  just  announced,  is 
Un  Roman  Parisien. 

Smile  Augier  was  born  at  Valence  in  1820.  His 
little  two-act  comedy,  La  Cigue,  first  brought  him 
into  notice.  With  Ponsard  he  then  stood  forth  as 
ready  to  form  the  nucleus  of  a  reaction  against  the 
excesses  of  romanticism  on  the  stage.  His  princi- 
pal pieces  have  been  Un  Homme  de  Bien,  L'Aven- 
turiZre,  Gabrielle,  Philiberte,  Les  Effrontes,  La 
Pierre  de  Touche,  Le  Oendre  de  M.  Poirier,  and,  above 
all,  La  Jeunesse,  one  of  the  best  of  modern  comedies. 
Lively  wit,  skilful  art,  strong  and  piquant  language, 
are  his  most  marked  qualities. 

Pierre  Dupont  was  born  at  Lyon  in  1821.  A 
book,  called  Les  Paysans,  containing  six  songs, 
gave  him  popularity,  the  airs  as  well  as  the  words 
being  his  own  composition.  He  wrote  also  the 
text  for  the  Legend  of  the  Wandering  Jew,  illus- 
trated by  Gustave  Dore. 

Henri  Murger  (1822-1861)  was  a  Bohemian  after 
Baudelaire's  own  heart.  His  Le  Bonhomme  Jadis 
is  one  of  the  pieces  most  frequently  played  at  the 
Comedie  fra^aise.  Adeline  Protat,  Le  Pays  latin, 
Les  Baveurs  d'Oau,  and  LesVacances  de  Camille  are 
considered  his  best  productions.  He  is  most  famous, 
however,  for  having  produced  La  Vie  de  Boheme, 
which  describes  the  reckless,  miserable,  and  yet 
from  time  to  time  wildly  and  desperately  gay  life 
of  the  literary  gipsies  of  Paris. 

Victorien  Sardou,  still  the  inexhaustible  caterer 
for  the  stage-loving  public  of  Paris,  was  born  at 
Paris  in  1831.  Representing  at  the  Ode"on,  when 
still  quite  young,  La  Taverne  des  fitudiants,  a  three- 
act  comedy,  he  suffered  the  discouraging  experience 
of  an  ignominious  failure.  Working  then  for  six 
years  before  again  trying  his  fortune  with  the  pub- 
lic, he  brought  out  a  comedy  called  Les  Pattes  de 


SOO  French  Literature, 

Mouche,  which  was  received  with  great  applause. 
He  was  from  that  time  a  favorite  with  the  Parisian 
public.  His  best  pieces  were  Les  Femmes  Fortes, 
Nos  Intimes,  Les  Ganaches,  La  Perle  noire,  Les 
Vieux  Gar^ons,  La  Famille  Benoiton,  and  Nos  bons 
Villayeois. 

Most  of  the  popular  novelists  of  our  day  have 
put  one  or  more  pieces  on  the  stage.  But  they  will 
come  more  fitly  before  us  in  another  place,  es- 
pecially as  their  plays  are  generally  dramatized 
from  their  novels.  Such,  for  instance,  is  Jules 
Claretie's  Monsieur  le  Ministre;  and  such  is  the 
Pere  de  Martial,  of  the  Louisianian  Albert  Delpit. 

Adolphe  Belot  and  Jules  Verne  are  among  these 
romancers,  who  are  also  producing  plays  and  fairy- 
pieces  for  the  stage.  Other  living  dramatists  who 
may  be  named  are  Ferdinand  Dugue,  Emile  Ber- 
gerat,  Auguste  Vacquerie,  Frangois  Coppee,  Edouard 
Pailleron,  Eugene  Guiraud,  Grangeneuve,  and 
Marras. 

Something  must  be  said  of  the  extraordinary  re- 
vival of  Provengal  poetry.  The  ancient  poetry  of 
Provence  was  in  no  sense  a  part  of  French  litera- 
ture. The  race  which  created  it  was  not  under  the 
dominion  of  French,  kings.  The  language  in  which 
it  took  form  was  a  cultivated  tongue  before  the 
Trouveres  had  composed  a  single  lay  in  the  old 
French  tongue.  It  is  different,  however,  with  the 
Provengal  literature  of  recent  production.  The 
race  from  which  the  modern  Provengal  poets  spring 
has  long  been  a  component  part  of  the  French 
nation  ;  the  language  in  which  they  express  them- 
selves is  as  recognized  a  patois  or  dialect  of  French 
as  the  Lowland  Scottish  is  of  English.  The  Pro- 
vengal poets,  then,  have  the  same  place  in  French 
literature  as  that  held  in  English  literature  by 
writers  like  Burns  and  Hogg. 

Th'e  most  eminent  of  the  Provengal  poets  of 
modern  times,  the  "last  of  the  Troubadours,"  as  he 
has  been  called,  was  Jacques  Jasmin  (1798-1864). 


Poets  and  Playwriters.  301 

He  was  born  at  Agen.  In  his  Soubenis  he  gives  a 
humorous  account  of  his  early  life,  stating  that  he 
was  of  humble  birth  and  was  taught  the  trade  of  a 
hair-dresser,  which  he  considered  not  amiss,  as  it 
was  concerned,  as  well  as  his  other  business  of  mak- 
ing poems,  with  head-work.  His  poems  possess  both 
pathos  and  wit;  and  that  peculiar  quality  of  rustic 
or  childlike  archness  and  freshness,  which  is  the 
charm  of  dialect,  is  of  course  largely  present  in  a 
poetry  that  springs  so  directly  from  the  soil  and 
has  suffered  no  sophistication  from  books  or  the 
society  of  cities.  Jasmin's  chief  works  were  Lou 
Chalwari,  LSAbuylo  de  Castel-Cuille,  and  Las  Papil- 
lotos  de  Jasmin. 

Another  of  these  Provencal  poets,  Frederic  Mis- 
tral, was  born  near  Saint-Remy  in  1830.  His  poems 
have  been  numerous,  the  chief  of  them  being  his 
Alireio,  of  which  a  fine  translation  has  been  made 
by  our  American  poet,  Mrs.  Margaret  J.  Preston. 


302  French  Literature. 


XX. 

ROMANCERS. 

IN  no  field  of  literary  labor  has  the  harvest  been 
so  abundant  in  modern  France,  as  in  that  of  prose 
fiction.  I  shall  not  attempt  to  arrange  and  classify 
the  writers  of  romance,  but  give  them  for  the  most 
part  in  chronological  order.  Some  have  been 
named  already,  because  their  productions  entitled 
them  to  be  ranked  as  poets  or  as  workers  for  the 
stage,  as  well  as  romancers.  Of  this  class  were 
Victor  Hugo,  Alexandre  Dumas,  and  Octave  Feuil- 
let. 

The  first  on  our  list  must  be  Nodier,  Paul  de 
Kock,  and  the  writer  who  called  himself  Saintine. 

Charles  Nodier  (1783-1844)  was  born  at  Besan- 
9on.  He  was  an  eminent  philologist,  a  graceful  poet, 
and  a  charming  story-teller.  Besides  two  linguis- 
tic works,  the  Dictionnaire  des  Onomatopees  and  the 
Elements  du  Linguistique,  he  produced  Jean  Sbogar, 
Thertse  Aubert,  Adtte,  Smarra,  Trilby,  Les  Souvenirs 
de  la  Revolution  et  de  T Empire,  and  Les  Contes 
fantastiques. 

To  Saintine  we  owe  the  exquisite  moral  and 
religious  romance  of  Picciola.  His  real  name  was 
Joseph  Xavier  Boniface  (1797-1865),  a  native  of 
Paris.  His  romances  and  poems  were  put  forth 
under  the  pseudonym  of  Saintine,  while  to  his 
comedies  and  vaudevilles,  of  which  he  wrote  a  vast 
number  in  concert  with  Scribe,  he  signed  the  name 
of  Xavier.  The  story  of  the  little  prison-grown 
plant,  which  converts  Charney  from  skepticism,  is 
his  finest  romance,  and  it  is  a  masterpiece.  Among 
his  other  stories  may  be  named  Mutile  and  Les 
Soirees  de  Jonathan. 


Romancers.  303 

Charles  Paul  de  Kock  (1794-1871),  born  at 
Plassy,  near  Paris,  besides  stories  in  verse  and 
vaudevilles,  wrote  upwards  of  fifty  novels.  His 
romances  are  frankly  coarse,  but  their  gayety,  their 
racy  humor,  and  their  truth  to  life — the  sort  of  life 
led  by  fast  young  men  in  Paris — have  given  them 
a  longer  lease  of  life  than  they  really  deserve. 
Still,  they  are  not  so  demoralizing  as  the  more 
subtly  depraving  sentimental  romances  which  came 
later  from  more  powerful  pens.  Among  his  books 
may  be  mentioned  Les  Enfants  de  Boulevard,  Une 
Grappe  de  Groseille;  Ninie  Guignon,  La  Fee  aux 
Amourettes ;  Les  Petits  Ruisseaux,  Ma  Petite  Con- 
sine,  Le  Demon  de  V Alcove,  Ni  Fille,  ni  Femme, 
Friquette,  and  Un  Jeune  Homme  mysterieux. 

His  son,  Henri  de  Kock,  has  followed  in  the  same 
path.  La  Dame  aux  Emeraudes,  Minette,  and 
L'Amant  de  Lucette  may  be  named  as  samples  of 
his  writings. 

Rodolphe  Toepffer  (1799-1846),  the  son  of  an 
able  painter,  was  a  Genevese  writer  and  professor 
of  literature.  His  moral  romances,  Nouvelles  gene- 
voises,  Rosa  et  Gertrude,  and  Le  Presbytere,  won 
him  much  reputation.  His  Voyages  en  Ziy-Zag 
was  a  book  of  travel-sketches,  which  he  illustrated 
himself.  His  essay  on  the  Beautiful,  under  the 
title  Reflexions  et  Menus  propos  dun  Peintre  Gene- 
vois  is  an  assthetic  treatise  of  great  value. 

Balzac  deserves  more  extended  mention  than 
this  sketch  can  afford  him.  Not  only  were  his 
romances  very  numerous,  but  they  were  careful 
art-studies  which  entitle  him  to  a  higher  place 
among  French  romancers  than  perhaps  any  other 
can  justly  claim. 

Honore  de  Balzac  (1799-1850)  was  born  at  Tours. 
He  wrote  at  first  under  various  assumed  names,  and 
was  long  unsuccessful  and  very  poor.  Giving  up 
at  last  the  manner  which  he  had  borrowed  from, 
Pigault  and  Lebrun,  and  writing  in  an  original 
style  his  Les  Derniers  Chouans,  ou  la  Bretagne  ev$ 


304  French  Literature. 

1800,  he  found  his  work  for  the  first  time  well  re- 
ceived by  the  public.  After  this  book  came  his 
Physiologie  du  Manage,  Scenes  de  la  Vie  Privee, 
Scenes  de  la  Vie  de  Province,  Scenes  de  la  Vie  Paris  - 
ienne,  Le  Medecin  de  Campagne,  Le  P&re  Goriot, 
La  Peau  de  Chagrin,  Histoire  Intellectuelle  de  Louis 
Lambert,  La  Recherche  de  VAbsolu,  Les  Parents 
Pauvres,  Eugenie  Grandet,  Le  Lis  dans  la  Vallee, 
Le  Cure  de  Village,  Histoire  de  Cesar  Birotteau,  and 
a  mystico- metaphysical  novel  entitled  Seraphita. 
He  is  considered  to  have  shown  wonderful  penetra- 
tion into  the  mysteries  of  the  female  heart.  In  his 
Contes  Drolatiques,  he  imitated  the  wild,  fantastic 
humor  of  Rabelais,  using  also  the  quaint  style  of 
that  author.  He  aspired  to  group  all  the  varieties 
of  human  character  into  a  complete  whole,  and  de- 
scribed his  romances  under  the  general  title  of 
Comedie  humaine.  There  can  be  no  question  as  to 
his  wonderful  grasp  of  the  methods  of  analysis  in 
observing  human  nature.  His  fault  lay  in  over- 
working minute  details  and  losing  sight  of  that 
symmetry  which  is  essential  to  perfection  in  form. 
His  literary  habits  were  eccentric,  and  many  curious 
stories  are  told  of  his  mode  of  working  after  hav- 
ing gathered  material  for  a  novel.  He  married  in 
later  life  [a  Polish  lady,  who  had  long  lived  with 
him. 

Melchior  Frederic  Soulie'  (1800-1847)  was  born 
at  Foix.  His  romances  glow  with  imagination, 
and  have  a  fresh  and  sparkling  style.  Among  the 
best  were  Les  Deux  Cadavres,  Le  Comte  de  Toulouse, 
Le  Vicomte  de  Beziers,  Le  Conseiller  d'Etat,  and  Les 
Memoires  du  Didble. 

Prosper  Merimee  (1803-1870)  took  high  rank  as 
romancer,  but  he  was  also  historian,  playwriter,  and 
archaeologist.  He  was  born  at  Paris,  the  son  of  a 
distinguished  painter.  Merimee  made  early  ac- 
quaintance with  English  and  Spanish  literature, 
and  came  forward  as  an  enthusiastic  adherent  of  the 
romantic  school.  His  first  work,  Le  Theatre  de 


Romancers.  305 

Clara  Gazul,  purporting  to  be  dramatic  pieces  trans- 
lated from  the  Spanish,  did  not  meet  with  success. 
His  next,  La  Guzla  (the  name,  an  anagram  of  the 
earlier  nom  de  plume)  was  an  effort  to  popularize 
the  folk-song  of  Illyria  and  Montenegro.  It  was 
much  admired  in  Germany,  but  its  popularity  was 
confined  to  literary  circles. 

After  the  Revolution  of  1830,  Merime'e  entered 
public  life,  like  so  many  of  the  literary  men  of  the 
day.  Meanwhile  he  kept  writing  for  the  reviews  a 
series  of  wild  and  thrilling  tales  in  a  strong,  clear 
condensed  style,  a  style  of  restrained  power  which 
made  all  his  stories  very  fascinating.  The  chief  of 
these  was  Colomba,  a  Corsican  tale  of  horror. 
Others,  equally  well-told,  were  Matteo  Falcone  and 
L'Enlbvement  de  la  redoute.  Besides  these,  his 
other  most  striking  tales  were  Arsene  Guillot  and 
Carmen.  The  opera  of  Carmen  is  founded  on  this 
tale.  His  historical  studies  bore  fruit  in  works  on 
episodes  in  Roman  history ;  an  episode  in  Russian 
history,  worked  up  in  Les  Faux  Demetrius ;  and 
his  Chronique  du  Regne  de  Charles  IX.  One  of  the 
ablest  of  these  historical  studies  was  his  La  Jacque- 
rie, a  study  of  one  of  the  most  frightful  outbursts 
of  ignorant  and  oppressed  humanity  in  French  his- 
tory, a  series  of  occurrences  which  was  at  once  a 
prelude — though  at  a  great  distance  in  time — to  the 
Revolution  of  1789,  and  a  prophecy  of  that  tremen- 
dous convulsion. 

Among  the  works  of  this  polished  cynic,  but 
most  gifted  artist  in  word-painting,  must  also  be 
named  his  fantasy-piece,  Venus  d  llle ;  Le  Double 
Meprise,  a  picture  of  modern  society;  and  the  sin- 
gular Lettres  d  Une  Inconmie,  which  made  so  great 
a  stir  when  they  appeared  shortly  after  his  death. 
They  seemed  to  have  been  addressed  to  some 
woman  who  possessed  the  fascinating  qualities, 
though  probably  not  the  beauty,  of  Madame  de 
Recamier,  and  who  enjoyed  the  adoration  of  her 
admirer,  but  was  able  to  be  as  obdurate  to  him  as 
20 


306  French  Literature. 

that  lady  was  to  Benjamin  Constant.  She  was  an 
Englishwoman. 

Eugene  Sue,  though  now  known  best  by  the 
Mysteries  of  Paris  and  The  Wandering  Jew,  began 
his  fame  by  the  production  of  sea-stories.  In  this 
line  he  ranks  with  Cooper  and  Marryatt,  showing 
great  fertility  of  fancy  and  that  boyish  spirit  of  fun 
and  frolic  which  is  so  natural  to  the  sailor.  De 
Vericour  names  Corbiere  and  Lecomte  as  other 
writers  of  nautical  novels  during  the  same  period. 

Marie  Joseph  Eugene  Sue  (1804-1857)  was  born 
at  Paris.  Becoming  an  army-surgeon,  he  served 
under  the  Due  d'Angouleme  in  the  expedition  into 
Spain.  Transferred  thence  to  the  navy,  he  was 
present  at  the  battle  of  Navarino,  and  saw  enough 
of  life  at  sea  to  fit  him  for  writing  those  stories 
with  which  he  began  his  literary  career.  Of  his 
earlier  works  the  chief  were  Atar  Outt,  a  frightful 
story  of  revenge;  Salamander,  also  full  of  horror; 
and  Vigie  de  Koatven,  the  story  of  a  prosperous  vil- 
lain. This  indeed  is  the  blot  upon  Sue's  fiction. 
His  villains  always  triumph. 

After  leaving  the  ocean  as  the  scene  of  his  tales, 
Sue,  in  the  new  field  which  he  chose  and  in  which 
he  developed  a  socialist  tendency,  first  showed  his 
peculiar  power  in  Mathilde,  ou  les  Memoir  es  d'une 
jeune  Femme.  But  his  Mystires  de  Paris  and  Le 
Juif  Errant  were  the  works  which  really  estab- 
lished his  fame.  They  created  wild  excitement,  and 
enriched  their  author,  so  large  were  the  sales.  His 
power  in  these  romances  is  that  acquired  over  the 
reader's  imagination  by  complicated,  intricate,  and 
exciting  plots,  appealing  strongly  to  the  passion  of 
curiosity.  No  English  novelist  has  ever  shown 
this  art  in  anything  like  the  same  degree  of  skill  as 
it  is  to  be  found  in  a  goodly  number  of  French 
romancers.  These  thrilling  romances  of  Sue's  were 
followed  by  Martin,  V Enfant  Trouve ;  Les  Sept 
Pechees  Capitaux;  and  Les  My  stores  du  Peuple.  In 
his  later  works  he  developed  socialist  tendencies. 


Romancers.  307 

He  was  in  public  life  when  the  Second  Empire 
came;  and,  being  identified  with  the  extreme  wing 
of  the  republican  party,  he  was  banished  by  Louis 
Napoleon. 

We  now  reach  the  most  remarkable  woman  of 
recent  times,  the  "George  Sand"  of  literature. 
Amantine  Lucile  Aurore  Dupin,  who  became  the 
Baronne  Dudevant  by  her  marriage,  was  born  (180-1 
—1876)  at  Paris.  Her  father  was  descended  from 
the  famous  Marshal  de  Saxe.  While  still  Made- 
moiselle Dupin,  she  was  moved  at  one  time  to  take 
the  veil,  but  the  reading  of  J.  J.  Eousseau's  works 
changed  her  purpose.  Married  to  the  Baron  Dude- 
vant at  an  early  age,  she  lived  with  him  for  nine 
years'.  At  the  end  of  that  time,  finding  her  wedded 
life  intolerable  and  discovering  that  her  husband 
had  neither  love  for  her  nor  confidence  in  her,  she 
got  him  to  consent  to  a  formal  separation,  and  went 
to  Paris  to  engage  in  literary  work.  In  concert 
with  Jules  Santleau,  she  wrote  Rose  et  Blanche. 
After  parting  with  Sandeau,  she  kept  by  the  advice 
of  Delatouche,  the  editor  of  the  Figaro,  for  which 
she  wrote  her  earlier  romances,  the  first  half  of 
Sandeau's  name  and  signed  her  works  George  Sand, 
Delatouche  holding  that  the  public  would  not  give 
a  woman  due  credit  for  her  writings.  Her  Indiana 
gave  the  first  indication  of  her  splendid  powers. 
In  these  earlier  works,  her  pent-up  wrath  at  the 
broken  illusions  of  the  woman-heart  thrown  upon 
a  cold,  heartless,  and  corrupt  world,  found  vent  in 
a  reckless  plea  for  passion  and  a  scorn  for  the  mar- 
riage-tie, which  would  have  utterly  condemned  her 
works  with  the  moral  part  of  the  French  reading 
public,  had  it  not  been  for  the  fascinating  style  and 
enchanting  glow  of  feeling  which  showed  a  fresh- 
ness of  heart  that  seemed  incompatible  with  real 
depravity. 

Indiana  was  followed  by  Valentine,  Lelia,  Jacques, 
Andre,  Leone  Lenni,  and  ftimon.  The  delirium  of 
passion  and  of  outraged  feeling  seemed  to  pass 


308  French  Literature. 

away  with  these  earlier  romances.  Her  travels  in 
Italy  and  Spain  may  have  had  something  to  do 
with  soothing  her  mind.  The  influence  of  Lamen- 
nais,  too,  who  was  then  engaging  her  services  as 
a  writer  for  his  journal,  Le  Monde,  may  have  had 
some  effect  in  awakening  her  to  that  spirit  of 
Christian  resignation  which  her  Lettres  h  Marcie 
breathed.  Certainly,  the  whole  atmosphere  of  her 
literary  work  became  purer  and  sweeter.  Andre 
and  Simon  were  a  definite  contrast  in  spirit  to 
works  like  Indiana  and  Lelia.  But  she  seems 
at  all  times  to  have  been  remarkably  susceptible 
to  influences  from  without,  the  influence  of  scenery 
and  the  influence  of  society.  Many  writers  have 
spoken  of  her  masculine  tastes  and  masculine  type 
of  mind.  No  greater  mistake,  it  seems  to  me, 
could  be  made.  Few  women  have  ever  possessed 
in  a  higher  degree  than  she  the  essentially  femi- 
nine gift  of  assimilating  through  sympathy  all 
the  spirit,  thoughts,  and  qualities  of  every  man  in 
whom  she  became  deeply  interested,  and  reproduc- 
ing with  definitely  feminine  art  what  she  had  thus 
absorbed.  She  was  a  highly  gifted  woman,  doing 
in  literature  what  every  superior  woman  does  in 
society,  the  written  sexual  transmutation  of  the 
one  answering  to  the  spoken  and  acted  of  the 
other.  Her  travels  suggested  L1  Uscoque,  Les  Mai- 
tres  Mosa'istes,  Mauprat,  and  La  Derniere  Aldini. 
Her  studies  in  philosophical  speculations  bore  fruit 
in  the  mystical  Spiridion,  and  her  essay  in  prose- 
poetry,  Les  Sept  Cordes  de  la  Lyre.  Her  political 
ideas  took  form  in  Le  Compaynon  du  Tour  de 
France  and  Pauline. 

About  this  time,  her  literary  success  having 
secured  her  a  comfortable  maintenance,  she  obtained 
a  divorce.  In  the  Revue  Independante,  which  she 
started  with  Viardot  and  Leroux,  she  published 
Horace,  Consuelo,  and  La  Comtesse  de  Rudolstadt. 
These  were  followed  by  Jeanne  and  Le  Meunier 
tfAngibault.  In  all  these  later  works,  the  political 


Romancers.  309 

tone  is  strongly  democratic,  and  in  the  last-men- 
tioned her  views  are  decidedly  socialistic. 

She  went  back,  however,  at  a  later  date,  to  purely 
literary  romances.  Such  were  Isidora,  Teverino, 
La  Petite  Fadette,  Francois -le-Champi,  Les  Maitres 
Sonneurs,  La  Filleule,  and,  above  all,  that  charm- 
ing little  prose  idyll,  La  Mare  au  Diable. 

Her  Letters  dun  Voyageur  described  "  with  pathos 
and  animation  the  reminiscences  of  her  youth,  the 
course  of  her  affections,  the  blight  and  desolation  of 
her  soul  under  accumulated  sorrows;  but  she 
no  longer  speaks  in  a  wrathful  and  .passionate  tone; 
her  spirit  is  subdued  and  chastened ;  and  she  pours 
forth  the  natural  and  plaintive  effusions  of  one 
wounded  in  the  tenderest  sensibilities,  stricken  as  a 
mother,  a  friend,  a  lover,  and  a  wife.  The  countries 
she  has  visited  in  her  travels  are  also  sketched 
with  great  force  and  vigor  of  delineation,  which 
leaves  a  vivid  impression  on  the  mind  of  the 
reader."  This  is  the  judgment  of  De  Vericour. 

After  the  Revolution  of  1848,  she  produced  some 
pieces  for  the  stage.  Among  her  successes  were 
JFrangois-le-Champi,  Claudie,  Le  Pressoir,  Le  Man- 
age de  Victor ine,  and  Maitre  Favilla.  Especially 
was  Le  Marquis  de  Villemer  a  striking  dramatic 
success.  Among  her  later  works  we  may  cite  also 
Les  Beaux  Messieurs  de  Bois-Dore,  Jean  de  la  Roche, 
Mademoiselle  de  la  Quintinee,  and  La  Confession 
cTune  Jeune  Fille.  Among  those  autobiographical 
pieces  which,  taken  together,  would  make  a  large 
group  of  memoirs,  were  her  Histoire  de  Ma  Vie, 
Journal  d'un  Vogageur pendant  la  Guerre  (published 
in  1871),  and  Impressions  et  Souvenirs. 

Respecting  her  relations  with  a  succession  of 
men  eminent  in  different  spheres  of  art  and  litera- 
ture, I  choose  to  say  nothing  here,  though  there 
is  quite  a  literature  on  that  single  subject. 

The  writer,  whose  works  go  by  the  name  of  De 
Stendhal,  is  stated  by  De  Vericour  to  be  Bayle, 
French  Consul  at  Civita  Yecchia  not  long  before 


310  French  Literature. 

1848.  The  pessimist  view  of  life  is  that  taken  in  his 
novels.  They  were  Rouge  et  Noir,  La  Chartreuse 
de  Parme,  and  L'Abbesse  de  Castro.  Besides  these, 
he  produced  biographies  of  Haydn,  Mozart,  and 
Metastasio,  a  descriptive  work,  called  Promenade 
dans  Rome ;  a  work  on  Italian  painting,  called 
Histoire  de  la  Peinture  en  Italic,  and  a  book  of 
travels. 

fimile  Souvestre  (1806-1854)  was  born  at  Morlaix 
in  Bretagne.  His  amiable  and  cheerful  spirit 
makes  him  a  marked  contrast  to  De  Stendhal. 
His  romances  illustrate  Breton  life,  with  its  roman- 
tic scenery,  its  rugged  coast,  and  its  simple  people. 
Les  Derniers  Bretons  was  the  first  of  these.  It  was 
followed  by  his  ficlielle  des  Femmes,  Riche  et  Pauvre, 
and  the  Memoires  d'un  Sans-culotte.  This  last 
deals  with  the  struggle  in  La  Vendee  between  the 
royalists  and  the  republicans.  Les  Confessions  d'un 
Ouvrier,  Au  Coin  du  Feu,  Memorial  de  Famille,  Le 
Foyer  breton,  L'ffomme  et  V Argent,  and  Pierre  et 
Jean  were  others  of  his  works.  But  that  which  is 
most  readily  mentioned  when  the  name  of  Souvestre 
comes  up,  is  his  Philosophe  sous  les  Toils. 

Leon  Gozlan  (1806-1866) — already  mentioned 
among  the  play- writers — born  at  Marseille,  besides 
furnishing  the  theatre  with  numerous  dramas, 
comedies,  and  vaudevilles,  was  the  author  of  an 
archaeological  romance  of  history,  entitled  Les 
Tourelles  ou  Les  Chateaux  de  France.  Another 
romance  of  his  was  Le  Notaire  de  Chantilly. 

Theophile  Gautier  (1811-1872)  was  born  at 
Tarbes.  One  of  the  most  original  and  one  of  the 
most  productive,  both  in  prose  and  verse,  of  recent 
French  authors,  he  belongs,  like  most  of  the 
modern  artists  in  fiction,  to  the  sensuous  school. 
Trained  to  be  an  artist  with  pencil  and  brush,  he 
has  carried  the  qualities  proper  to  that  form  of 
production  into  literature.  There  is  wonderful 
picturesqueness  in  his  visions  of  the  past,  a  fine 
taste  for  classic  beauty  in  all  his  work.  But  his 


Romancers.  311 

fancy  is  pagan,  sensual,  and  impure  in  too  many  of 
bis  romances.  The  voluptuous  visions  he  sets 
before  the  mind  are  powerful  creations;  but,  as  is 
so  apt  to  be  the  case  with  an  imagination  so  un- 
restrained, there  is  a  monotony  in  his  passion  for 
portraying  the  naked  form  of  woman,  which  in- 
evitably narrows  the  sphere  of  his  genius.  His 
most  famous  novels  were  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin, 
Le  Capitaine  Fracasse,  and  Spirite.  Shorter  sketches 
of  Poesque  fancy  were  La  Morte  Amoureuse,  Une 
des  Nuits  de  Cleopatre,  Clarimonde,  Arria  Marcella, 
Le  Pied  de  la  Momie,  Omphale,  and  Le  Roi  Can- 
daules. 

Both  Ernest  Feydeau  and  fimile  Bergerot  wrote 
memoirs  inspired  by  their  admiration  for  Gautier ; 
and  Maxime  du  Camp  has  recently  given  in  the 
Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  interesting  reminiscences 
of  literary  and  artistic  life  in  Paris  at  the  time 
when  he  and  Gautier  and  Arsene  Houssaye  were 
publishing  the  Revue  de  Paris.  It  was  in  the  pages 
of  this  review  that  Baudelaire,  Flaubert,  and 
Eugene  Fromentin  first  became  known  to  the 
public. 

Gautier's  place  as  journalist  critic  was  as  high  as 
that  which  he  attained  as  a  romancer.  But  he  had 
to  submit  to  a  great  deal  of  over- work,  harassed  as 
he  was  by  his  creditors  and  hardly  dealt  with  by 
his  family.  During  this  period,  his  literary  work 
was  done  altogether  in  the  printing-office  ;  and  he 
once  said :  "  Schiller,  in  order  to  set  his  fancy 
working,  inhaled  the  odor  of  rotten  apples  ;  I  be- 
lieve I  could  not  write  without  smelling  the  stench 
of  printer's  ink." 

Among  his  poems  may  be  named  La  Comedie  de 
la  Alort  and  fimaux  et  Camees.  It  was  from  ex- 
perience gathered  from  the  fate  of  his  first  poem, 
that  he  warned  Flaubert  against  indulging  his 
passion  for  following  his  own  theories  of  art.  "I 
know  all  about  that,"  said  he  to  Flaubert.  "  Every- 
body goes  through  that  phase,  just  as  children  have 


312  French  Literature. 

the  measles.  When  I  used  to  live  with  Arsena 
Houssaye,  Camille  Rogier,  and  Gerard  de  Nerval, 
we  had  just  such  ideas.  I  know  what  it  is  to  write 
chefs  d'oBuvre:  I  wrote  La  Comedie  de  la  Mort ;  I 
gave  away  two  volumes  of  prose  in  order  to  have 
my  verses  published,  of  which  seventy-five  copies 
were  sold.  Everybody  can  write  chefs  d'ceuvre,  if 
he  will  only  believe  in  them." 

In  his  youth,  Gautier  was  one  of  the  most  ex- 
travagant of  the  romantic  school,  emphasizing  his 
artistic  and  literary  creed  by  wearing  a  flaming 
crimson  waistcoat  and  keeping  his  hair  in  long 
waving  masses.  Of  course  he  outlived  these 
follies,  and  his  genius  was  evident  in  masterly 
creations  and  polished  language  even  in  his  most 
fantastic  days.  In  few  literary  works  is  the  artist 
so  manifest  as  in  his.  He  was  also  a  remarkable 
instance  among  recent  French  writers  of  perfect  in- 
difference to  political  life  and  complete  devotion  to 
the  literary  profession.  He  traveled  a  good  deal, 
and  his  travels  bore  fruit  in  his  Voyage  en  Italic, 
Voyage  en  Russie,  Voyage  en  Espagne,  and  L*  Orient. 

Jean  Alphonse  Karr  was  born  at  Paris  in  1808. 
He  has  published  many  romances,  in  a  style 
remarkable  for  clearness  and  precision,  and  with  a 
singular  vein  of  humor  running  like  an  oddly  tinted 
thread  through  all  that  he  has  written.  He  began 
with  Sous  les  Tilleuls,  the  story  of  his  first  dis- 
appointment in  love.  This,  being  well  received, 
was  followed  by  Une  Heure  trop  tard.  After  these 
came  Fa  Dttze,  Vendredi  Soir,  Le  Chemin  plus  court, 
Einerley.  Grenevi&ve,  Clotilde,  Hortense,  Am  Rauchen, 
Pour  ne  pas  etre  Treize,  De  Midi  a  Quatorze  Heures, 
Feu  Bressier,  Voyage  autour  de  mon  Jardin,  La 
.famille  Alain,  Histoire  de  Rose  et  de  Jean  Duchemin, 
Le&  Fees  de  la  Mert  Clovis  Gosselin,  Agathe  et  Cecile, 
Fort  en  Theme,  Soirees  de  Sainte-Adresse,  Les 
Femmes,  Raoul,  Lettres  ecrites  de  mon  Jardin,  Au 
Bord  de  la  Mer,  Promenades  hors  de  mon  Jardin,  La 
Penelvpe  Normande,  La  Peche  en  Eau  douce  et  en 


Romancers.  813 

Eau  salee,  the  last    being  a  treatise  on  fishing,  of 
which   he   is  very  fond,  as  he  is  also  of  gardening. 

Xavier  Marmier,  famous  for  his  travels  as  well 
as  for  his  numerous  translations  from  the  German, 
was  born  at  Pontarlier  in  1809.  Being  a  master 
of  most  of  the  languages  of  northern  Europe,  be 
was  made  professor  of  foreign  literature  at  Eennes ; 
but  he  has  traveled  since  in  all  the  continents, 
studying  languages,  manners,  and  literature  every- 
where. His  romances  were  Les  Fiances  de  Spitz- 
berg,  Gazida,  HelZne,  Suzaine,  and  others. 

Bon  Louis  Henri  Martin  was  born  at  St.  Quentin 
in  1810.  His  first  publication  was  a  novel  entitled 
Tour  du  Loup,  written  in  concert  with  a  young 
friend.  After  this,  he  produced  many  other  ro- 
mances, among  them  Tancrede  de  Rohan.  He  con- 
ceived, with  Lacroix,  the  idea  of  compiling  a  his- 
tory of  France,  made  up  of  extracts  from  different 
authors,  which — Lacroix  assisting  him  only  with 
the  first  volume — he  carried  on  alone  to  its  com- 
pletion. His  other  important  works  have  been 
L'Abbaye  au  Bois,  ou  la  Femme  de  Chambre  ; 
Histoire  de  Soissons  ;  De  la  France,  de  son  genie 
et  deeses  destinees  ;  Daniel  Mauin;  IS  Unite 
Italienne  et  La  France  ;  Jean  Reynaud ;  Pologne  et 
Moscovie  ;  Vercingetorix  ;  La  Russie  d1  Europe ;  His- 
toire de  France  populaire ;  and  Etudes  d'archeologie 
Celte. 

Edouard  Kene  Lefebvre  Laboulaye,  born  at  Paris 
in  1811,  is  one  of  the  ablest  and  most  versatile  of 
modern  French  writers.  He  was  first  known  in 
letters  by  his  Histoire  du  droit  de  propriete  en 
Europe.  Later,  he  published  an  essay  Sur  de 
Savigny,  a  work  entitled  Des  Recherches  sur  la  Con- 
dition civile  et  politique  des  Femmes,  and  an  essay 
Sur  les  Lois  criminelles  des  Romains.  Besides  the 
works  on  jurisprudence,  which  are  very  learned  and 
very  clear  in  style,  and  his  Histoire  politique  des 
Btats  Unis,  he  has  produced  imaginative  and  satiri- 
cal works  of  a  high  degree  of  humor  and  power. 


314  French  Literature. 

His  best  works  of  political  satire  are  his  Paris  en 
Amerique  and  that  exquisite  satirical  fairy-tale,  Le 
Prince  Caniche,  with  its  inimitable  exposition  of 
the  "  Gobemouchian  "  theory  of  government.  He 
has  also  written,  in  his  Contes  bleus,  some  of  the 
best  of  modern  fairy-tales  for  children;  an  Arabian 
romance  of  much  charm  entitled  Abdallah ;  and  a 
collection  of  tales,  called  Souvenirs  (Pun  Voyageur. 

Louis  Veuillot,  a  writer  on  the  clerical  side,  was 
born  at  Baynes  in  1813.  He  returned  from  a  visit 
to  Rome  in  1838  a  vehement  ultramontane  journal- 
ist. Among  his  works,  polemical,  political,  and 
satirical,  were  Les  Libres  Penseurs,  LEsclave  Vin- 
dex,  Les  Franeais  en  Algerie,  Les  Odeurs  de  Paris, 
and  Parfum  de  Rome.  He  also  wrote  a  strikingly 
original  romance  entitled  Corbin  et  d1  Aubecourt. 

Auguste  Maquet  was  born  at  Paris  in  1813. 
Dumas  was  struck  with  the  ability  displayed  in  his 
drama,  Bathilde,  and  proposed  that  they  should 
work  together.  Many  of  Dumas's  romances  were 
thus  composed.  But  in  1851,  Maquet  began  to 
write  under  his  own  name.  Among  these  romances, 
which  Dumas  did  not  retouch,  are  Histoire  de  la 
Bastille;  Prisons  de  T  Europe;  Belle  Gabrielle ;  Le 
Beau  d'Argennes ;  Dettes  de  Cozur ;  L'Envers  et 
LEndroit ;  La  Maison  du  Baiyneur  ;  and  La  Rose 
blanche.  He  also  put  upon  the  stage  the  opera,  La 
Fronde;  and  the  plays,  Le  Chateau  de  Gautier,  Le 
Comte  de  Lavernie,  and  La  Belle  Gabrielle. 

Louis  Amedee  Bngene  Achard  was  born  at 
Marseille  in  1814.  His  stories  make  up  more  than 
thirty  volumes.  Among  them  may  be  named  the 
pretty  romance  of  Belle  Rose  and  La  Robe  de  Nessus, 
Maurice  de  Treuil,  Madame  Rose,  Le  Clos-Pommier, 
L  Ombre  de  Ludovic,  La  Famille  Guillemot,  Le  Due 
de  Carlepont,  Histoire  d'un  Homme,  L 'Eau  qui  Dort, 
La  Mis^re  d'un  Millionaire,  and  Madame  de  Sareus. 

Jean  Mace",  born  at  Paris  in  1815,  ranks  among 
the  story-tellers  only  by  his  Contes  du  petit  Chateau, 
fairy-tales  which  in  my  opinion  are  very  far  from 


Romancers.  315 

being  first-rate,  although  commended  by  so  high  att 
authority  as  Laboulaye.  While  educating  the  girls 
of  Alsace,  Mace'  conceived  the  idea  of  simplifying 
and  popularizing  science  for  children,  and  began  by 
his  Bouchee  de  Pain,  which  he  followed  up  by  a 
number  of  other  educational  works  of  the  same 
sort.  This  notion  of  always  instructing,  of  making 
very  sure  to  "  point  a  moral,"  is  what  makes  his  so- 
called  fairy-tales  so  very  far  away  from  the  ideal 
type. 

Arsene  Houssaye  was  born  in  1815.  He  appeared 
as  an  author  first  in  a  romance  entitled  Couronne  de 
Bluets.  His  later  work  has  been  principally  that 
of  journalist  and  art-critic.  Among  his  works  are 
L1  Histoire  du  Quarante-et-untime  Fautenilde  V Acad- 
emic franr ais ;  L'eventail  brise;  Une  histoirc 
etranye ;  Les  larmes  de  Jeanne  ;  Lucie  ;  La  robe  de 
la  mariee  ;  Roman  des  femmes  qui  ont  aimee  ;  Une 
trayique  aventure;'  Les  trois  Duchesses ;  and  Vie  de 
Leonardo  da  Vinci.  I  have  already  mentioned  his 
engaging  with  Theophile  Gautier  and  Maxime  du 
Camp  in  the  revival  of  the  defunct  Revue  de  Paris. 
This  was  in  October,  1851,  and  the  monthly  was 
kept  up  until  January,  1858. 

Paul  Henri  Corentin  FeVal  was  born  in  1817. 
Of  his  numerous  novels,  always  lively  and  entertain- 
ing, may  be  named  Alizia  Pauli ;  Les  Amours  de 
Paris ;  Les  Fanfarons  du  Roi ;  La  Maison  de 
Pilate  ;  Les  Nuits  de  Paris  ;  Le  Roi  des  Gueux  • 
and  La  Fontaine  aux  Perles. 

Erckmann  and  Chatrian  are  two  writers,  whose 
works  have  attained  great  popularity  both  in  France 
and  abroad,  on  account  of  their  real  merit  and  the 
freshness  of  the  scenes  and  simplicity  of  the  life 
depicted,  as  well  as  the  pathos  of  the  stories  told, 
but  partly  also  from  the  sympathy  lately  aroused 
for  Alsace,  and  largely  too  from  the  circumstance 
of  constant  copartnership  in  the  production  of  their 
romances.  The  marriage  of  two  minds  has  always 
been  an  interesting  fact  in  the  history  of  literature. 


316  French  Literature. 

ftmile  Erekmann  was  born  at  Phalsbourg  in 
1822  ;  Alexandra  Chatrian^  at  Soldatenthal  in 
1826.  Since  1847,  they  have  worked  together  in 
the  composition  of  their  Alsatian  tales,  signing 
them  with  the  double  name,  Erckmann-Chatrian. 
Their  works  first  attained  popularity  on  the  publica- 
tion of  Llllustre  Docteur  Matheus  in  1859.  Among 
their  best  romances  may  be  named:  Conies  des 
bords  du  Rhin  ;  Le  Fou  Yegof  ;  Le  Joueur  dt  Clar- 
inette  ;  La  Maison  Foresti^re  ;  Le  Consent  de  1813; 
Madame  There'se ;  L 'Invasion  et  Waterloo ;  Le 
Grand-pbre  Lebigre  ;  Lami  Fritz  ;  Les  Deux  Fibres  • 
and  Brigadier  Frederic.  Some  of  these  stories 
have  also  been  thrown  into  the  form  of  comedies. 
Their  play  of  Rantzan,  produced  by  the  Come'die 
frangaise,  is  a  sort  of  bourgeois  Romeo  and  Juliet. 
It  is  a  dramatization  of  Les  Deux  Fr'eres. 

The  younger  Dumas,  born  at  Paris  in  1824,  made 
his  reputation  by  that  immoral  but  very  popular 
story,  La  Dame  aux  Camelias,  from  which  the  op- 
era of  La  Traviata  was  afterwards  taken.  Among 
his  other  romances  are,  Le  Roman  d'une  Femme  ; 
La  Dame  aux  Perles ;  Diane  de  Lys  ;  La  Femme 
du  Claude ;  Les  idees  de  Madame  Aubray  •  Une 
Visite  de  Noces  ;  Le  Bijou  de  la  Reine  ;  and  La  Prin- 
cesse  de  Bagdad.  He  has  also  written  plays. 

One  of  the  most  vivacious  and  fantastic  of 
French  romancers,  Edmond  About,  who  of  late 
years  betook  himself  wholly  to  political  journalism, 
is  but  lately  dead.  He  died  in  1885. 

Edmond  Francois  Valentine  About  was  born  at 
Dieuze,  Meurthe,  in  1828.  His  La  Grtce  Contem- 
poraine,  an  extravagantly  satirical  sketch  of  mod- 
ern Greece,  brought  him  at  once  into  notice.  It 
was  followed  by  the  publication  in  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes  of  his  autobiographical  romance, 
Tolla.  He  now  tried  the  stage ;  but  his  comedy  of 
Guillery  ou  I'Effronte  was  a  failure.  He  returned 
to  romance ;  and  Les  Manages  de  Paris,  Le  Roi 
des  Montagnes,  Gcnnaine,  and  Les  Echasses  de 


Romancers.  817 

Jfaitre  Pierre  showed  where  his  true  powers  lay. 
Others  of  his  romances  are  L'Homme  a  I'oreHle 
cassee,  T rente  et  Quarante,  Le  nez  d'un  notaire,  La 
Viei-lle  Roche,  Madelon,  and  'LInfame.  Some  of  his 
political  pamphlets,  such  as  La  Question  Romaine, 
and  La  Rome  Contemporaine,  made  a  great  noise 
in  their  day. 

As  a  story-teller,  About  reminds  me  of  two 
very  dissimilar  writers  in  English  literature,  the 
English  satirist  Peacock  and  our  own  Poe  in  his 
quality  of  fantastic  romancer.  There  is  no  poetic 
imagination  in  About's  whimsical  fancies,  however, 
nor  any  of  that  air  of  a  reserved  force,  which  is 
manifest  in  the  artistic  creations  of  Poe. 

Another  political  writer  who  has  used  romance 
as  the  vehicle  of  satire  is  Rochefort.  Victor  Henri, 
Comte  de  Rochefort-Lucay,  was  born  at  Paris  in 
1830.  His  father  was  a  great  royalist,  but  his 
mother  taught  the-"  youth  democratic  principles. 
As  a  journalist,  he  was  a  thorn  in  the  side  of  the 
Napoleonic  government,  and  spent  much  of  his  time 
in  prison  or  in  exile.  After  the  fall  of  the  Empire, 
he  was  involved  in  the  proceedings  which  resulted 
in  the  temporary  establishment  of  the  Commune. 
For  complicity  in  their  atrocities,  he  was  tried  with 
other  Communists  by  the  government  of  Thiers, 
condemned,  and  imprisoned.  Escaping  from  the 
penal  colony  in  the  Pacific,  to  which  he  had  been 
transported,  he  returned  by  way  of  the  United 
States  to  Europe,  was  allowed  to  go  back  to  Parts, 
on  the  declaration  of  amnesty  in  1880,  and  has  since 
then  written  his  story  of  Mademoiselle  Bismarck,  in 
which  Gambetta  and  other  political  leaders  are  said 
to  figure  under  fictitious  names. 

Victor  Cherbuliez  was  born  in  1832.  After  a 
fantasy-piece  entitled  Un  Cheval  de  Phidias,  he 
published  a  series  of  romances.  Among  these  are 
Le  Comte  Kostia ;  Le  Prince,  Vitale;  Paule  Mere; 
Le  Roman  dune  honnete  Femme  ;  L'idee  de  Jean 


318  French  Literature. 

Teterol;  Les  Amours  fragiles  ;  and  Noirs  et  Rouges. 
There  is  a  good  deal  of  artistic  power  in  his  works. 

Ludovic  Halevy,  the  son  of  Leon  HaleVy  and 
nephew  of  the  great  composer  of  music,  was  born 
at  Paris  in  1834.  His  father,  born  in  1802,  was  in 
his  youth  a  Saint-Simonian,  and,  later,  a  professor 
of  literature  and  author  of  Fables,  La  Grece  Tra- 
gique,  and  a  play  entitled  Electre.  The  son  wrote 
the  libretti  for  many  well-known  operas,  and  a 
number  of  romances.  Among  these  is  L'Abbe 
Constantin,  a  story  of  exquisite  simplicity  and 
sound  moral  tone.  The  light  touch  of  Halevy  is 
an  artistic  gift  which  all  can  feel  the  charm  of,  but 
which  only  trained  critics  perceive  and  appre- 
ciate. 

One  of  the  most  delightful  purveyors  of  amuse- 
ment for  children  in  these  days  is  Madame  la  Com- 
tesse  de  Segur  (nee  Kostopchine),  who  has  written 
a  host  of  amusing  books,  always  bright  and  im- 
aginative, sunny  and  sweet,  with  never  a  taint  of 
evil  about  them.  Her  Nouveaux  Contes  de  Fees  is 
one  of  the  best  of  fairy-tale  books.  Her  other 
books  are  Apres  la  Pluie  le  beau  Temps;  Come- 
dies et  Proverbes  ;  Diloy  le  Chemineau;  Frangois  le 
Bossu  ;  Jean  qui  grogne  et  Jean  qui  rit;  La  For- 
tune de  Gaspard;  La  /Swur  de  Gribouille;  L'Au- 
berge  de  I'Auge  gardien;  Le  General  Dourakine; 
Les  bons  Enfants  ;  Les  deux  Nigauds  ;  Les  Mal- 
heurs  de  Sophie;  Le  Mauvais  Genie;  Les  Petites 
Filles  Modeles;  Les  Vacances ;  Memoir es  d'une 
Ane;  Pauvre  Blaise;  Quel  Amour  d  Enfant! 
and  Un  bon  Petit  Diable. 

I  have  but  space  to  touch  lightly  upon  other 
romancers  of  note.  The  passion  for  crude  art, 
taking  form  in  pictures  of  coarse  and  depraved  life, 
in  sensual  passion  untinged  by  any  light  of  wit  or 
coloring  of  humor,  in  minute  studies  of  horrors, 
seems  to  have  taken  possession  of-  those  who  cater 
for  the  public  taste  in  our  day. 

Ernest  Feydeau's  Fanny,  with  its  "sickly  and 


Romancers.  319 

an  wholesome  sentimentality  ;  "  Flaubert's  Madame 
Bovary,  with  its  revolting  scenes  ;  Adolphe  Belot'a 
Femme  de  Feu,  with  its  debasing  tendencies ;  Zola's 
Rougon-Macquart  family,  in  the  whole  of  the  abom- 
inable series  in  which  those  brutal  specimens  of 
humanity  figure,  are  types  of  the  worst  features  of 
the  prevailing  "realism,"  so  much  vaunted  by  the 
admirers  of  that  school. 

Charles  de  Bernard,  Jules  Claretie,  Smile  Gab- 
oriau,  Jules  Verne,  Alphonse  Daudet,  make  another 
and  a  very  varied  group.  I  can  only  mention  a 
few  of  their  stories.  De  Bernard  is  responsible  for 
Les  Ailes  d'leare;  Un  Reau-Pere;  Gerfaut;  Le 
Nozud  Gordien;  Le  Paratonnerre ;  Le  Paravent; 
La  Peau  du  Lion.  Among  Claretie's  works  may 
be  named  Une  Maitresse ;  Les  Amours  d'un  In- 
terne; and  Le  Renegat. 

Gaboriau,  who  died  some  years  ago,  wrote  a  vast 
number  of  police-court  stories,  with  intricate  plots 
woven  about  crime.  The  names  of  some  of  these 
are  L' Affaire  Lerouge;  L*  Argent  des  Autres ;  La 
Clique  doree ;  Les  Comediennes  adorees ;  La  Corde 
au  Cou ;  Le  Crime  d'Orcival;  Le  Dossier,  No.  113; 
Les  Esclaves  de  Paris;  Manages  dAventure  ; 
Monsieur  Lecoq;  La  Vie  Infernale ;  and  Petit 
Vieux  des  Batignolles. 

Verne's  flighty  and  fantastic  stories — amusing,  if 
there  were  any  end  to  that  string  of  extravagancies 
— are  so  well  known  by  translations,  that  it  will  be 
enough  to  name  one  or  two,  such  as  Autour  de  la 
Lune ;  De  la  Terre  a  la  Lune  ;  Vingt-mille  Lieues 
sous  les  Mers ;  Voyage  au  Centre  de  la  Terre ;  and 
Uih  Mysterieuse. 

Daudet,  who  plumes  himself  as  much  on  realistic 
pictures  as  Zola,  though  he  refrains  from  sinking 
quite  so  low,  that  is,  into  utter  filth,  has  acknowl- 
edged that  his  characters  are  taken  from  the. life, 
many  being  drawn  from  persons  now  living.  This, 
he  states,  is  the  case  with  all  the  characters  in  Fro- 
rrwnt  jeune  et  Risler  aine,  except  Zizi  Delobelle. 


320  French  Literature.  ., 

Among  his  other  books  may  be  named  Jack ;  Les 
Lettres  de  mon  Moulin;  Les  Hois  en  Exile;  Le 
Nabob  ;  and  Nwna  Roumestan.  His  Tartarin  de 
Tarascon  is  an  amusing  extravaganza,  much  en- 
joyed by  children.  His  brother  Ernest  has  written 
Le  Mari  and  Henriette,  and,  recently,  a  memoir  of 
t'ne  youth  of  himself  and  Alphonse,  entitled  Mon 
Frere  et  Moi:  /Souvenirs  d'Enfance  et  de  Jeunesse. 
Of  Zola,  it  would  be  superfluous  to  say  more  than 
is  contained  in  these  words  from  a  review  of  his 
Pot-Bouille  in  an  American  journal,  as  they  apply 
with  equal  fitness  to  all  his  books: 

"  There  is  not  one  decent  character  in  the  book  ;  not 
one  redeeming  trait  of  manhood  ;  not  one  pure  woman  ; 
not  one  touch  of  humor ;  not  even  an  innocent  child.  It 
reeks  with  filth.  It  is  a  veritable  hot-bed  of  indescribable 
grossnesses  and  will  besmear  every  one  who  touches  it." 

This  vile  literature  comprises  La  Conquete  de 
Plassans ;  La  Faute  de  VAbbe  Mouret;  Nana; 
Venire  de  Paris ;  L'Assommoir ;  and  one  or  two 
more,  the  latest  being  Pot-Bouille. 

Turning  from  this  reeking  atmosphere  to  pure 
air,  we  find  it  in  the  sweet  society  to  which  Mad- 
ame Durand  introduces  us.  This  is  the  writer  who 
puts  to  her  books  the  name  of  Henry  GreVille. 
Her  stories  have  been  mainly  of  Eussian  life.  But, 
whatever  her  theme,  she  gives  always  delightful 
pictures  of  domestic  life  and  hearty,  natural  char- 
acters. A  criticism  in  the  same  journal  quoted 
above  well  says : 

"  A  keenly  sympathetic  temperament,  a  pure  and  lim- 
pid style,  and  the  easy  flow  of  natural  and  graceful  dia- 
logue unite  in  the  charm  of  her  work.  There  is  some- 
thing idyllic  in  the  sweet  lessons  of  self-devotion  to 
another  vvliich  she  is  continually  teaching,  and  which, 
however  often  they  may  be  told,  never  lose  their  original 
freshness  and  simple  eloquence.  .  .  .  And  there  is  not  one 
of  her  books  that  is  not  pure  in  motive,  word,  and  deed — 
which  is  suying  a  great  deal  as  French  novels  go." 


Romancers.  321 

Her  books  are  numerous.  Among  them  I  may 
name  Cite  Menerd,  La  Niania,  Sonia,  Dosia,  Ariad- 
ne, and  La  Princesse  d'Ogheroff. 

Nor  is  Madame  Durand  the  only  pure  romancer. 
Madame  Craven's  religious  novels,  Recit  d'une 
Soeur,  Fleurange,  and  Anne  Severin  are  also  entitled 
to  respect  from  the  lofty  tone  and  untainted  atmos- 
phere which  they  breathe.  To  her  literature  also 
owes  Une  Annee  de  Meditations,  Le  Travail  dune 
Ante,  La  Sceur  Nathalie  Narlschkin,  and  Eliane. 
One  of  the  most  popular  of  living  romancers  is 
Andre*  Theuriet,  the  author  of  La  Chanson  du  Jar- 
dinier  and  Madame  Heurteloup.  He  lias  also 
written  Sous  Bois,  Mademoiselle  Guignon,  Le  Man- 
age de  Gerard,  Ondine,  La  Fortune  dAngele,  and 
Itaymonde. 

Edouard,  Vicomte  de  Beaumont- Vassy,  a  kins- 
man of  Gustave  de  Beaumont,  has  written,  besides 
a  historical  work,  several  romances  of  some  merit, 
among  them  Une  Marquise  d Autrefois. 

To  the  Marquis  de  Chennevieres  we  owe  some 
pretty  stories  about  peasant  life  in  the  province  of 
Perclie.  These  are  told  in  his  Contes  de  Saint- 
Sautin. 

Among  other  novelists  may  be  mentioned  Delpit, 
the  author  of  Le  Mariage  d'Odette  and  Le  Fils  de 
Coralie;  Brehat,  of  whose  numerous  tales  we  may 
mention  LAuberge  du  Solett  d'Or,  La  Cabane  du 
Sabotier,  and  La  Sorcie~re  Noire,  Capendu,  the 
author  of  La  Popote  and  LePre  Catelan  ;  Berthet, 
the  author  of  Le  Val  d'Andorre  and  La  Bastide 
rouge ;  Xavier  de  Montepin,  who  wrote  among 
other  tales  La  Compare  Leroux,  Viveurs  d' Autrefois, 
Les  Viveurs  de  Paris,  and  Les  Viveurs  de  Prov- 
ince; and  De  Goncourt,  the  author  of  Les  Fibres 
Zemganno,  Gavarni,  and  La  Maison  dun  Artiste. 
Arrnand  de  Pontmartin,  who  is  more  famous  as 
a  critic,  wrote  about  a  dozen  novels,  of  which  the 
most  striking  were  Or  et  Clinquant,  Les  Jeudis  de 
Madame  Charbonneau,  Les  Memoires  dun  Notaire, 


322  French  Literature. 

Pourquoi  je  reste  a  la  Camqagne,  and  Entre  Chien 
et  Loup. 

Madame  Charles  Eeybuad  wrote  Mademoiselle 
de  Malepeire,  Mise  Brun,  and  Le  Cabaret  de  Gau- 
bert.  Ponson  du  Terrail  is  responsible  for  a  host  of 
sensational  stories,  such  as  Un  Crime  de  Jeunesse, 
Les  Fils  de  Judas^  Memoires  dun  Gendarme,  Les 
Mysferes  des  Bois,  Nuits  du  Quartier  Breda,  and  Le 
Secret  du  Docteur  Rousselle. 

There  are  also  Georges  Ohnet,  whose  Le  Maure 
de  Forges  is,  I  believe,  his  masterpiece  ;  Jacques  Vin- 
cent, with  his  Le  Cousin  Nott ;  fimile  Kichebourg, 
with  his  Le  Missel  de  la  Grand  m^re ;  and  Lucien 
Biart,  with  his  Jeanne  de  Maurice. 

The  opposition  of  the  French  Society  for  the  Pro- 
tection of  Animals  to  the  abuses  of  the  practice  of 
vivisection  has  given  origin  to  a  special  form  of 
fiction,  that  devoted  to  inculcating  humanity  to  the 
dumb  creatures  under  man's  protection.  The  So- 
ciety gave  a  gold  medal  a  few  years  ago  to  Aure- 
lieu  Scholl  for  his  pathetic  little  story,  Le  Roman 
de  Follette. 

A  charming  story  of  a  wandering  troupe  of  per- 
forming animals  by  Hector  Malot,  entitled,  Sans 
Famille,  and  translated  into  English  with  the  title, 
"  No  Relations,"  seems  to  have  been  inspired  by  the 
same  gentle  motive.  Malot  has  written  a  number 
of  novels.  Romain  Kalbris  is  a  romance  for  chil- 
dren. Of  his  other  works  I  may  name  Cara,  Le 
Docteur  Claude,  La  Boheme  tapdgeuse,  and  Une 
Femme  d Argent. 

Pleasing  tales  have  been  written  by  Louis  ^nault, 
Daniel  Lesueur,  and  A.  Gennevraye. 


Critics  and  Scientists.  32(5 


XXL 

CRITICS  AND  SCIENTISTS. 

D'IsRAELi's  epigram  on  the  critics  has  no  appli- 
cation in  the  case  of  the  best  French  critics.  They 
have  been  remarkably  able  men,  who  have,  besides 
producing  original  works  of  merit,  raised  criticism 
into  a  powerful,  attractive,  and  useful  branch  of 
literature.  The  excellence  to  which  French  criti- 
cism has  attained  in  modern  times  is  largely  due  to 
the  new  direction  given  to  it  by  Villemain.  His 
criticism  was  a  great  advance  upon  that  of  Laharpe 
and  Diderot.  His  lectures  on  literature  were 
eloquent  and  fascinating,  delivered  in  a  style  of 
elegant  and  graceful  ease,  that  possessed  all  the 
elasticity  which  characterizes  the  best  conversation. 

Abel  Fran9ois  Villemain  (1790-1780)  was  born  at 
Paris,  and  became  in  early  life  a  Professor  of  Liter- 
ature. His  lectures,  with  those  of  Guizot  and 
Cousin,  always  drew  immense  audiences,  and  counted 
among  the  most  brilliant  and  fruitful  intellectual 
events  of  the  Restoration  period.  Besides  his  Eloges 
of  Montaigne  and  Montesquieu,  his  History  of  Crom- 
well, his  drama  entitled  Lascaris,  ou  les  Grecs  du 
XV.  Siecle,  translations  from  Cicero  and  Pindar,  and  a 
history  of  lyric  poetry,  he  produced  Discours  et 
Melanges  litteraires,  Tableau  de  V Eloquence  chreti- 
enne  au  IVe  Siecle,  £tudes  d'Histoire  Moderne, 
Etudes  de  Litterature,  and  Chateaubriand,  sa  Vie, 
ses  £crits,  et  son  Influence  litteraire  et  politique. 
Two  delightful  volumes  were  all  put  forth  by  him, 
entitled  Souvenirs  contemporains  d'Histoire  et  de  la 
Litterature. 

He  mingled  for  a  time,  like  m^st  or  ihe  literary 
men  of  the  day,  in  political  life,  was  minister  under 


324  French  Literature. 

Louis  Philippe,  became  a  Peer  of  France  and  Per' 
petual  Secretary  of  the  Academie  Fran$aise;  but 
all  his  earlier  and  most  of  his  later  years  were  given 
up  to  literary  labor.  One  of  the  weightiest  influ- 
ences which  he  applied  to  the  discussion  of  literature 
was  that  derived  from  his  study  of  English  literature. 
Amply  stored  with  all  the  arsenal  of  knowledge  the 
past  could  give,  his  mind  was  enabled  to  keep  a  just 
poise  between  the  claims  of  the  classic  and  the  ro- 
mantic schools  and  to  act  as  mediator  between  them. 
He  might  justly  be  styled  the  first  great  historical 
critic. 

In  the  order  of  time,  Patin,  Vinet,  Chasles, 
Ampere,  Girardin,  and  even  Janin  may  be  entitled 
to  mention  before  Sainte-Beuve.  But  his  is  the 
great  name  in  criticism,  easily  the  superior  of  them 
all,  and  the  artist  and  poet  among  critics.  He 
stands  naturally  by  the  side  of  Villemain. 

Charles  Augustin  Saint-Beuve  (1804-1869)  was 
born  at  Boulogne-sur-Mer  after  his  father's  death. 
His  mother,  a  woman  of  fine  education  and  char- 
acter, took  great  pains  with  his  education.  Her 
family  was  of  English  origin,  and  through  her  he 
early  acquired  a  knowledge  of  the  English  language 
and  literature.  Beginning  life  as  a  medical  student, 
he  was  easily  drawn  into  literary  circles  and  critical 
work  by  his  enthusiasm  for  Victor  Hugo's  Odes  et 
Ballades  and  the  principles  of  the  romantic  school. 
He  was  soon  moved  to  try  his  own  powers  in  the  field 
of  poetry.  His  Poesies  de  Joseph  Delorme  won  the 
plaudits  of  Beranger  and  other  literary  men,  though 
it  did  not  hit  the  taste  of  the  public.  Les  Conso- 
lations, his  next  poetic  effort,  was  more  successful. 
With  Pensees  dAout,  he  retired  from  the  domain 
of  poetry.  His  poetry  is,  in  the  main,  an  imitation 
of  the  mild  muse  of  Crabbeand  Wordsworth,  familiar, 
grave,  and  self-communing  verse  for  which  the 
French  have  no  great  taste — fortunately. 

Besides  these  three  collections  of  poetry,  he  pro- 
duced several  volumes  of  Portraits  litteraires, 


Critics  and  Scientists.  325 

Jlistoire  de  la  Potsie  francaise  au  XVIe  Stide,  His- 
toire  de  Port  Royal,  a  romance  entitled  Volupte  ; 
and,  above  all,  his  delightful  series  of  biographical 
and  critical  sketches  which  appeared  under  the  title 
of  Causeries  de  Lundi. 

Sainte-Beuve  was  especially  a  student  of  the  en- 
vironment of  the  writer  he  was  criticising.  He 
made  it  his  first  business  to  inquire  who  and  what 
the  author  was ;  what  produced,  what  developed, 
and  what  modified  him.  He  was  sympathetic  and 
appreciative  in  his  judgments,  but  at  the  same  time 
a  little  cynical ;  impartial,  tolerant,  and  inclined  to 
skepticism  in  religious  matters ;  subtle  in  analysis ; 
piquant,  animated,  richly  descriptive  in  style ;  and 
remarkably  gifted  in  combining  biographic  details 
and  suggestive  allusions  with  purely  literary  criti- 
cism. 

Henri  Joseph  Guillaume  Patin  was  born  at  Paris 
in  1793.  His  main  claim  to  a  place  in  literature  is 
his  Etude  sur  les  Tragiques  Grrecs. 

Alexandre  Vinet  (1797-1847)  was  born  in  the 
village  of  Grassier,  Canton  de  Vaud.  He  was  Pro- 
fessor of  French  Literature  successively  at  Bale  and 
at  Lausanne.  His  principles  led  him  to  infuse  into 
his  literary  studies  Christian  and  philosophic  ideas, 
while  his  taste  for  art  enriched  and  beautified  the 
moral  conceptions  with  which  he  inspired  his  essays. 
Etudes  sur  Pascal,  Histoire  de  la  Litterature  Fran- 
qaise  au  XVIIIQ  Stide,  Etudes  sur  la  Litterature 
Francaise  au  XIX*  iSiecle,  Essais  de  Philosophic 
Morale  et  Religieuse,  Discours  Religieux,  Etudes 
jZvangeliques,  and  Ecrits  Polemiques  constitute  his 
contributions  to  literature. 

Victor  Euphemion  Philarete  Chasles  (1798-1873) 
was  born  at  Mainvilliers.  He  wrote  Etudes  sur  les 
Homrnes  et  les  Mceurs  au  XIXe  Sttcle  and  other 
critical  works,  besides  an  account  of  his  travels.  His 
specialty  was  English  literature.  The  articles  making 
up  the  books  issued  by  Philarete  Chasles  were 


326  French  Literature. 

originally  contributions  to  the  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes  and  the  Journal  des  Debats. 

Jean  Jacques  Ampere  (1800-1 864),,  the  son  of 
that  Andre  Marie  Ampere  who  has  been  spoken  of 
already  in  this  work  as  an  illustrious  scientist  of  the 
Napoleonic  period,  was  born  at  Lyon.  He  soon  won 
a  brilliant  reputation  for  large  and  comprehensive 
literary  research,  traveling  as  he  did  in  Italy,  Ger- 
many, and  the  Scandinavian  lands,  and,  later,  in  the 
eastern  Mediterranean,  and  studying  language  and 
literature  wherever  he  went.  He  was  very  success- 
ful as  a  professor  in  inspiring  enthusiasm  for  lin- 
guistic and  literary  studies,  and  at  the  same  time  he 
wrote  on  many  subjects.  His  Litterature  et  Voy- 
ages told  the  story  of  his  travels  and  studies.  The 
brilliancy  of  his  style  and  the  correctness  of  local 
coloring  and  historic  fact  give  great  interest  to 
his  La  Grece,  Some  et  Dante;  Etudes  Litteraires 
d'apres  Nature;  VHistoire  Romaine  d  Rome;  and 
Cesar.  His  Histoire  Litter  air  e  de  la  France  avant 
le  douzieme  Siecle  is  a  careful  and  philosophic  resume 
of  the  great  work  of.  the  Benedictines  on  the  same 
period,  giving  an  account  of  literary  work  done  on 
the  soil  of  Gaul  before  it  became  France,  and  at  the 
same  time  treating  of  the  influence  of  the  Latin, 
Germanic,  and  Keltic  languages  upon  the  formation 
of  the  French  tongue. 

Jules  Gabriel  Janin  (1804-1874)  was  born  at  St. 
fitienne,  in  the  department  of  the  Loire.  Thackeray, 
in  that  satirical  little  sketch  on  "Dickens in  France," 
which  was  after  his  death  re-published  in  "  Early 
and  Late  Papers,"  describes  our  critic  thus : 

"  Who  is  Janin?  He  is  the  critic  of  Prance.  J.  J.  in 
fact — the  man  who  writes  a  weekly  feuilleton  in  the 
Journal  des  Debats  with  such  indisputable  brilliancy 
and  wit,  and  such  a  fine  mixture  of  effrontery,  and 
honesty,  and  poetry,  and  impudence,  and  falsehood, 
and  impertinence,  and  good  feeling,  that  one  can't 
fail  to  be  charmed  wilh  the  compound,  and  to  look 
rather  eagerly  tor  tlie  Monday  paper;  Jules  Janin  is  the 


Critics  and  Scientists.  327 

man,  who,  not  knowing  a  single  word  of  the  English 
language,  as  he  actually  professes  in  the  preface,  has 
helped  to  translate  the  Sentimental  Journey" 

And,  then,  Thackeray  goes  on  to  abuse  him 
heartily  for  not  liking  Dickens's  Nicholas  Nickleby. 
But,  in  spite  of  this  fierce  little  satire,  Jules  Janin, 
the  "  King  of  the  feuilleton,"  as  Heine  called  him, 
is  not  to  be  despised.  He  was  for  Paris  the  sort  of 
piquant,  racy,  jolly  old  gossip  that — not  Aristoph- 
anes, but  some  human  counterpart  of  his  Dionusos 
might  have  been  for  Athens.  There  was  just  the 
sort  of  flavor  about  his  wit  and  wisdom  that  the  true 
Parisian  has  a  relish  for ;  and  the  favor  of  Paris 
made  Janin  a  rich  man  before  he  died. 

He  wrote  a  goodly  number  of  novels,  among  them 
EAne  mort  et  la  Jeune  Femme  guillotinee,  that  ill- 
omened  title  with  which  Thackeray  jeers  him  at 
every  turn  in  the  paper  just  cited.  He  wrote  also 
accounts  of  his  little  trips.  But  nothing  else  that 
he  wrote  got  him  anything  like  the  kind  and  amount 
of  reputation  which  he  gleaned  from  his  weekly 
feuilletons,  brimming  with  high  spirits  and  kind, 
hearty,  good  feeling,  as  well  as  much  ready  wit  and 
some  tenderness.  Pontmartin,  his  fellow  critic,  said 
that  he  could  not  withhold  his  affection  and  sym- 
pathy from  one  "  gifted  with  that  faculty  of  vibration 
which  responds  to  every  incident  of  public  life,  to 
every  episode  of  literary  life,  by  a  page,  a  line,  a 
word — the  page  true,  the  line  piquant,  the  word 
just."  It  is  Pontmartin  who  gives  in  eloquent 
words  the  story  of  Janin's  creation  of  the  feuilleton, 
and  then  adds  :  "  It  was  in  September,  1830,  that 
this  dramatic  and  literary  royalty,  which  still 
endures,  began  ;  and  since  that  time  there  has  never 
been  a  play,  a  book,  a  work  of  art,  an  actor,  a  great 
man,  an  event,  a  success,  a  misfortune,  a  fashion, 
an  absurdity,  a  caprice,  an  illustrious  death,  which 
has  not  been  reflected  in  these  rapid  pages,  steno- 


328  French  Literature. 

graphed  by  a  hand  which  nothing  wearies,  under 
the  dictation  of  each  day." 

Such  and  so  various  was  Janin's  matter.  His 
manner  was  all  his  own.  Never  was  there  just  such 
a  style,  quaint,  inverted,  fantastic,  grotesque,  run- 
ning through  the  whole  gamut  of  tones  with  a  sort 
of  Merry  Andrew  lightheartedness,  even  as  the  birds 
sing.  In  any  other  man's  work  it  would  be  rightly 
thought  affected,  as  would  Charles  Lamb's;  but  it 
was  the  natural  expression  of  that  "  fat  and  witty 
child,"  as  Dumas  called  him,  just  as  Lamb's  letters 
show  how  little  affectation  there  was  in  the  printed 
Elia.  Janin's  principal  feuilletons  were  collected 
and  published  under  the  title,  Histoire  dramatique 
et  litteraire. 

Nisard  stands  apart  from  these  critics,  as  a  bitter 
assailant  of  the  principles  of  romanticism. 

Jean  Marie  Napoleon  Desire  Nisard  was  born  at 
Chatillon-sur-Seine  in  1806.  He  began  as  a  jour- 
nalist in  opposition  to  the  government  of  Louis  XVIII. 
After  the  Eevolution  of  1830,  he  at  first  supported 
the  new  government,  but  was  soon  once  more  in 
opposition.  He  changed  again,  however,  and  in  the 
end  was  a  zealous  supporter  of  Louis  Philippe's 
government.  When  that  government  fell,  he  was 
for  a  time  in  obscurity,  but  emerged  with  the  rise 
of  Louis  Napoleon  to  power,  and  thenceforward  was 
somewhat  notorious  as  an  advocate  of  arbitrary 
measures.  Meanwhile,  as  a  critic,  he  avowed  loy- 
alty to  the  literary  spirit  of  the  past,  especially 
ridiculing  the  excesses  of  the  romantic  school  in  his 
criticisms  of  Victor  Hugo  and  De  Lamartine.  His 
Poetes  Latins  de  la  Decadence  seems  to  have  been 
purposely  written  to  point  the  resemblance  between 
the  Latin  literature  of  the  age  of  Lucan  and  the 
literature  of  modern  France.  His  other  works,  be- 
sides translations  from  the  Latin  classics,  where 
Histoire  de  la  Litter  ature  Fran^aise,  Souvenirs 
d1  Angleterre,  and  a  volume  of  Melanges. 

Gustave  Planche  (1808-1857)  was  an  austere  and 


Critics  and  Scientists.  329 

bitter  critic.  He  wrote,  however,  in  a  pure  and 
elegant  style ;  and  his  essays  on  English  literature 
were  particularly  useful  to  his  contemporaries  at  a 
time  when  the  French  were  only  beginning  to  take 
some  interest  in  the  great  body  of  literature  produced 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Channel.  His  articles 
appeared  in  the  Artiste,  the  Revue  des  Deux  Afondes, 
the  Journal  des  Debats,  and  the  Chronique  de 
Paris. 

Ange  Henri  Blaze  de  Bury  was  born  at  Cavaillon 
in  1816.  He  was  the  son  of  a  celebrated  composer 
of  music,  and  seems  to  have  always  taken  a  great 
interest  in  music  and  musicians.  Besides  translating 
"  Faust,"  and  other  poems  of  Goethe,  he  wrote  a 
volume  of  Poesies,  Etudes  on  Mozart,  Eossini,  Beetho- 
ven, and  other  contemporary  musicians,  and  an 
eloquent  and  enthusiastic  account  of  German  litera- 
ture, called  Eerivaina  et  Poetes  de  I'Allemagne. 

Sainte-Beuve's  greatest  rival  was  the  Comte 
Armand  de  Pontmartin,  born  in  1811,  and  living 
alternately  at  Paris  and  at  his  estate  of  Les  Angles 
near  Avignon.  Sainte-Beuve  denied  that  Pont- 
martin was  a  critic  at  all  in  the  true  sense  of  the 
term,  and  described  him  as  "  an  amiable  talker  and 
literary  chronicler  after  the  fashion  of  good  society 
and  the  drawing-room."  I  have  already  spoken  of 
De  Pontraartin's  novels.  His  critical  essays  were 
republished,  from  the  journals  in  "which  they  first 
appeared,  in  several  series,  with  such  titles  as 
Causeries  Litteraires,  Cauteries  du  Samedi,  and 
Nouveaux  Samedis.  His  religious,  moral,  and 
political  character  remains  steadfast  in  its  attach- 
ment to  the  old  principles  of  the  aristocratic  race  to 
which  he  belongs.  His  style  is  rich,  animated, 
flexible,  and  impassioned.  His  literary  criticism  is 
keen  and  earnest,  based  upon  great  underlying 
principles  which  force  him  to  condemn  much  that 
he  admits  to  be  forcible  and  seductive.  To  Balzac 
he  objects  that  his  art  is  morbid  and  corrupting, 
and  that  he  destroys  pure  and  noble  illusions ;  to 


330  French  Literature. 

Victor  Hugo,  that  he  stirs  up  animosity  between 
class  and  class,  and  that  his  genius  is  too  often 
delirious ;  to  Sainte-Beuve,  that  he  lacks  genuine- 
ness, has  no  convictions,  and  is  a  time-server,  un- 
happy, irascible,  and  sour  in  temper  beneath  his 
fine  phrases.  There  is  bitter  satire  in  all  this,  but 
enough  of  truth  to  have  made  it  very  telling. 

fimile  Montegut  was  born  at  Limoges  in  1826. 
His  article  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  on  the 
philosophy  of  Kalph  Waldo  Emerson  gave  him  his 
first  reputation.  His  criticisms  were  extended  over 
the  field  of  contemporary  French,  English,  and 
American  literature.  He  also  translated  Macaulay's 
History  of  England  and  Emerson's  Essays. 

One  of  the  youngest  and  most  brilliant  of  French 
critics  is  Taine.  He  has  the  credit,  even  among 
English  and  American  critics,  of  having  produced 
the  best  of  all  histories  of  English  literature.  His 
knowledge  of  this  subject  is  far  beyond  that  pos- 
sessed by  Chateaubriand,  Philarete  Chasles,  and 
others  who  have  treated  it  in  French. 

Hippolyte  Adolphe  Taine  was  born  at  Vouziers, 
Ardennes,  in  1828.  His  earlier  works  were  essays 
on  La  Fontaine  and  Livy,  and  a  work  entitled  Les 
Philosophes  Francois  au  dix-neuvieme  Siecle.  Later 
on,  he  brought  out  his  Essais  de  Critique  et  d'His- 
toire,  his  Philosophic  de  I' Art,  and  his  famous  His- 
toire  de  la  Litterature  Anglaise.  In  this  last  he 
carries  to  its  extreme  the  doctrine  of  environment 
and  of  original  race-characteristics,  and  with  the 
most  brilliant  diction  heaps  up  facts  upon  facts,  with 
a  breathless  prodigality  of  circumstance  and  of 
illustration,  to  build  up  the  theory  that  is  to 
account  for  every  phenomenon  of  genius.  It  is  all 
very  fine  and  philosophical,  but  perhaps  ignores  too 
readily  the  force  of  individual  character  and  gifts 
quite  irrespective  of  any  known  or  knowable  cause 
in  past  or  present.  Taine  has  since  written  Notes 
sur  I' Angleterre,  Les  Origines  de  la  France  Contem- 


Critics  and  Scientists.  331 

poraine,  Voyage  aux  Pyrenees,  Voyage  en  Italie, 
and  Vie  et  Opinions  de  M.  Graindorge. 

fimile  Gigault  de  la  Be'dolliere,  born  in  1814,  was 
in  early  life  a  favorer  of  Saint-Simon's  doctrines ; 
but  he  outgrew  those  notions.  Becoming  a  jour- 
nalist, he  produced  a  great  number  of  essays,  ro- 
mances, poems,  and  translations.  His  Soirees 
d'Hiver,  Les  Industriels,  Histoire  de  la  Garde 
Nationale,  and  Mceurs  et  Vie  privee  des  Franqais 
are  his  most  important  original  works. 

Many  of  the  professors  of  literature  in  French 
colleges  have  written  excellent  histories  of  French 
literature,  either  in  whole  or  in  part.  Among  these 
I  should  name  fimile  Chasles,  who  wrote  a  Histoire 
Nationale  de  la  Litterature  Franchise,  divided  into 
four  books  of  Origines,  namely  Le  Genie  Gaulois,  ou 
la  Race;  Les  Gallo-Romains,  et  la  Civilisation; 
Les  Gallo-Francs,  et  V Epopee;  and  Les  Gallo- 
Bretons,  et  V Esprit'  Romanesque.  This  work  was 
published  in  1870. 

To  Geruzez  we  owe  La  Litterature  Francaise  du 
Moyen  Age  aux  Temps  Modernes  and  La  Littera- 
ture Francaise  pendant  la  Revolution.  He  is  a 
spirited  and  agreeable  writer. 

To  Demogeot  we  are  indebted  for  Tableau  de  la 
Litterature  Franqaise  au  17 e  Siecle.  Demogeot 
lays  especial  stress  upon  the  revelations  which  the 
old  memoirs  give  of  the  inner  social  life. 

To  De  Vericour  we  owe  Milton  et  la  Poesie 
Epique  and  a  valuable  work  in  English  on  Modern 
French  Literature,  bringing  us  down  to  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1848.  De  Vericour  gave  especial  weight  to 
philosophical  and  political  developments. 

Other  historians  of  French  literature  besides  those 
already  named  are  Aubertin,  Baron,  Saint-Marc 
Girardin,  Godefroy,  Nettement,  Albert,  and  Char- 
pentier.  Baret,  Bida,  Fauriel,  and  Gaston  Paris  on 
old  French  and  Proven9al  literature ;  Villemarque  on 
that  of  Bretagne ;  Assailly  on  the  Minnesingers ; 
Bossert  on  German  literature  down  to  the  Middle 


332  French  Literature. 

Ages ,  Courriere  on  Slavonic  literature ;  Gidel  on 
modern  Greek  literature ;  Roux  on  modern  Italian 
literature,  represent  some  of  the  authorities  in  the 
critical  study  of  literatures. 

In  the  field  of  biography,  Sainte-Beuve  supplies 
sketches  of  Boileau,  Chateaubriand,  Chenier,  De 
Comines,  Courier,  Delavigne,  Diderot,  Fenelon, 
Hugo,  LaBruyere,  La  Fontaine,  La  Harpe,  Lamar- 
tine,  Lamennais,  La  Rochefoucauld,  Lebrun,  Lesage, 
Littre,  Malherbe,  Marivaux,  Marmontel,  Massillon, 
Millevoye,  Moliere,  De  Musset,  Racine,  Reynard, 
Renan,  Saint-Pierre,  Saint-Simon,  Scribe,  George 
Sand,  Madame  de  Stael,  De  Tocqueville,  and  De 
Vigny. 

Lomenie  gives  us  Beaumarchais  et  son  Temps  ; 
Littrt),  Comte  et  la  Philosophic  Positive;  Guizot, 
Corneille  et  son  Temps  and  a  number  of  other  lives ; 
Flourens,  lives  of  Buffon  and  Cuvier;  Levallois, 
D'Haussonville,  and  Pons,  each  a  work  on  Sainte- 
Beuve  ;  Walkenaer,  Memoires  sur  Madame  de 
Sevigne ;  and  De  Falloux,  Madame  Swetchine,  sa 
Vie  et  ses  (Euvres. 

Here  will  fitly  come  the  consideration  of  a  few 
essayists  on  moral,  religious,  or  philosophical  subjects, 
whose  works  cannot  be  conveniently  classed  under 
any  general  head. 

fimile  Edmond  Saisset  (1814-1863)  was  born  at 
Montpellier.  Besides  furnishing  a  great  many  arti- 
cles on  philosophy  to  the  Dictionnair.e  des  Sciences 
Philosophiques  and  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes, 
he  produced  an  essay  Sur  la  Philosophic  et  la  Re- 
ligion au  XIXe  Siecle,  and  another  De,  Philosophic 
Religieuse  which  have  been  highly  commended. 

Jean  Charles  Leveque  was  born  at  Bordeaux  in 
1818.  His  work  entitled  La  Science  du  Beau 
Etudiee  dans  ses  Principes,  ses  Applications  et  son 
Histoire;  his  fitudes  de  Philosophic  Grecque  et 
Latine  ;  and  his  Du  Spiritualisme  dans  I1  Art,  have 
all  won  high  honor. 

Jules  Francois  Suisse  Simon  was  born  at  Lorient 


Critics  and  Scientists.  333 

in  1814.  He  was  a  follower  of  Cousin  in  philosophy ; 
but,  having  entered  political  life,  he  has  made  a 
greater  name  there  than  in  literary  work.  He  re- 
fused to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  Second 
Empire,  but  after  its  downfall  became  a  prominent 
personage  in  the  political  world.  Among  his  works 
are  Le  Devoir,  La  Religion  naturelle,  La  Liberte 
de  Conscience,  La  Liberte,  L'Ouvriere,  EEcole,  and 
L'Ouvrier  de  huit  Ans.  He  is  remarkable  for  inde- 
pendence of  thought,  for  his  steady  maintenance  of 
the  rights  of  the  people,  his  defense  of  liberty  of  the 
press,  and  of  the  interests  of  the  laboring  class, 
especially  women  laborers. 

Pierre  Jules  Hetzel,  whose  pseudonym  was  P.  J. 
Stahl,  was  born  in  1814.  He  has  been  called  the 
French  Sterne.  His  chief  works  are  Scenes  de  la  Vie 
des  Animaux,  Le  Diable  h  Paris,  Tom  Pouce,  His- 
toire  dun  Homme  enrkume,  Le  Voyage  dun  Etudi- 
ant,  and  Bttes  et  Geni.  His  sketches  were  highly 
praised  by  Madame  Dudevant  and  Louis  Ratisbonne. 

Among  the  friends  and  ardent  admirers  of  La- 
mennais  was  a  young  poet,  Georges  Maurice  de 
Guerin,  who  died  before  reaching  the  age  of  thirty. 
His  memory  was  kept  sacred — even  more  than  by 
the  few  remains  of  his  published  a  generation  later 
—through  the  charming  journal  and  letters  of  his 
sister,  Mademoiselle  Eugenie  de  Guerin,  whose 
devout  and  poetical  soul  shines  sweetly  in  the  naive 
style  which  was  so  natural  to  her.  The  book  issued 
with  the  literary  remains  of  Maurice  de  Guerin  is 
entitled  Journal,  Lettres  et  Fragments  de  M.  Gue- 
rin. His  sister's  writings  are  issued  with  the  same 
title,  except  that  Mademoiselle  Eugenie  takes  the 
place  of  M. 

One  of  the  greatest  names  in  the  France  of  our 
days  is  that  of  Renan.  Unquestionably  a  great 
thinker  in  many  fields  of  thought,  his  attitude 
toward  Christianity  has  done  much  to  obscure  the 
real  merit  of  his  character  and  writings  for  those  of 
us  who  believe  that  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  is  indeed 


334  French  Literature. 

the  Son  of  God,  and  that  he  came  into  the  world  to 
save  sinners. 

Joseph  Ernest  Renan  was  born  at  Fre*guier  in 
1823.  He  early  won  distinction  in  linguistic  studies, 
and  was  especially  noted  for  his  acquaintance  with 
the  Semitic  languages.  His  first  work  of  impor- 
tance was  his  Histoire  generate  et  Systemes  compares 
des  Langues  Semitiques.  This  was  followed  by  his 
Etude  de  la  Langue  Grecque  au  Moyen  Age.  His 
other  historical,  linguistic,  and  ethical  works  were 
his  Sur  Averroes  et  VAverroisme,  his  Mission  de 
Phenice,  Etudes  d'Histoire  Heligieuse,  Essais  de 
Morale  et  de  Critique,  La  Reforme  Intellectuelle  et 
Questions  Contemporaines,  Dialogues  et  Fragments 
Philosophiques,  and  Melanges  d' .Histoire  et  de  Voy- 
age. He  has  also  written  a  singular  satirical  poem 
called  Caliban. 

But  the  writings  by  which  he  has  most  stirred 
the  world  are  those  which  make  up  a  series  to  which 
he  gives  the  name,  Origines  du  Christianisme. 
The  first  part  of  this  was  La  Vie  de  Jesus.  This 
was  followed  by  the  Histoire  des  Apotres,  Saint 
Paul,  Antichrist,  and  La  seconde  Generation  Chre- 
tienne :  Les  Evangiles, 

Renan  began  with  a  proneness  to  dissent  from 
recognized  religious  and  political  creeds,  with  a 
scorn  for  mere  utilitarian  or  materialistic  conceptions 
in  philosophy,  and  with  a  vague  elevation  of  senti- 
ment, which  powerfully  drew  him  towards  the 
moral  side  of  Christ's  teachings.  Sympathizing 
rather  with  the  transcendental  school  of  thought 
than  with  materialist  skepticism,  he  was  essentially 
an  idealist,  and,  like  all  gifted  idealists  from  Plato 
to  John  Ruskin,  a  great  word-painter. 

Rejecting  miracles,  however,  with  as  firm  a  belief 
in  the  immutability  or  the  secularly  slow  mutability 
of  nature  as  the  narrowest  of  our  modern  philoso- 
phers, and  trying  to  explain  the  presence  of  the 
miraculous  element  in  the  narrative  that  has  come 
down  to  us,  not  by  the  theory  of  imposture,  but  by 


Critics  and  Scientists.  335 

that  of  reverent  wonder  producing  innocent  distor- 
tion of  the  facts,  he  attempts  on  this  hypothesis  to 
reconstruct  the  history  of  Christ  and  the  early 
Church.  Of  course,  it  all  results  in  his  calling  on 
us  to  believe  far  greater  wonders  in  the  moral  sphere 
than  any  recorded  miracles  are  for  us  in  that  of  the 
intellect.  There  is  also  something  so  illogical  and 
uncritical  in  the  arbitrary  rejection  of  one  statement 
of  a  series  of  authors — some  of  them  stating  facts  as 
eye-witnesses — to  accept  other  statements  made  at 
the  same  time,  and  to  build  huge  inferences  upon 
them,  that  one  is  apt  to  refuse  Renan  credit  for  the 
really  fine  things  he  does  say,  and  the  good  inten- 
tion which  prompts  him  throughout.  Some  good- 
will is  due  for  his  persistent  protest  against  the  mate- 
rialistic tendencies  of  the  age. 

Renan  takes  high  rank  among  philologists,  and 
may  well  lead  us  to  name  a  few  of  his  compeers  in  this 
field.  Perhaps  the  most  distinguished  of  them  was 
Littre,  who  died  in  1881. 

Maximilien  Paul  £mile  Littre  was  born  at  Paris 
in  1801.  He  early  gave  himself  up  to  linguistic 
studies.  He  had,  however,  also  studied  medicine ; 
and  his  first  publication,  (Euvres  d' Hippocrate,  was 
in  that  field.  Taking  a  great  interest  in  Comte's 
doctrines,  he  next  put  forth  a  lucid  exposition  of  his 
system  in  De  la  Philosophic  Positive.  Master  of  the 
old  French  used  by  the  Trouveres,  he  published  in 
the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  an  article  called  La 
Poesie  Homerique  et  VAneienne  Poesie  Francaise, 
in  which  he  gave  a  translation  of  the  first  book  of 
the  Iliad  into  old  French,  it  opens  thus  : 

"  Chante  1'ire,  6  deesse,  d'Achile  fil  Pelee, 

Greveuse  et  qui  douloir  fit  Grece  la  louee 

Et  choir  ens  en  enfer  mainte  ame  desevree, 

Baillant  le  cors  as  chiens  et  oiseaus  en  curee 

Ainsi  de  Jupiter  s'acomplit  la  pense*e, 

Du  jour  ou  la  querelle  se  leva  primerin 

D'  Atride  roi  des  hommes?  d'Achile  le  divin." 


836  French  Literature. 

Other  books  of  his,  besides  the  "  Dictionary," 
which  was  the  great  work  of  his  life,  were  Histoire 
de  la  Langue  Frangaise,  Paroles  de  Philosophic  Pos- 
itive, Auguste  Comte  et  la  Philosophie  Positive, 
Auguste  Comte  et  /Stuart  Mill.  His  article  in 
the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  Des  Origines  organ- 
iques  de  la  Morale,  brought  on  him  the  accusation  of 
atheism.  But  the  work  which  gave  him  his  greatest 
renown  was  his  Dictionnaire  de  la  Langue  Frangaise, 
the  most  complete  thing  of  the  kind  in  any  language. 

Other  eminent  philological  writers  are  Alart,  Bar- 
bier  de  Meynard,  Boissier,  Chatelain,  Cornu,  Bida, 
Cosquin,  David,  D'Herbomez,  Godefroy,  Gras, 
Luchaire,  Gaston  Paris,  Holland,  Senart,  Thomas,  and 
Tournier.  Graux  and  Paulin  Paris  have  recently 
died. 

Turning  to  writers  dealing  with  religion  on  the 
philosophical  and  historical  side,  we  have  Jean  Joseph 
Fran§ois  Poujoulat  (1808 — 1880),  who  began  his 
career  by  travelling  and  laboring  with  Michaud, 
when  the  historian  was  studying  the  scenes  of  the 
Crusades,  His  principal  works  were  Histoire  de 
Jerusalem,  Histoire  de  St.  Augustin,  and  a  review  of 
Kenan's  Vie  de  Jesus. 

fitienne  Vacherot  was  born  in  1809.  He  was, 
under  the  ban  of  the  Second  Empire  for  refusing  to 
take  the  oath  of  allegiance,  and  was  also  imprisoned 
for  his  La  Democratic^  His  principal  works  were 
Histoire  critique  de  TEcole  d1  Alexandrie,  La  Meta- 
physique  et  la  Science,  Essai  de  Philosophie  critique, 
and  La  Religion. 

An  able  writer  on  the  history  of  the  Early  Church, 
J.  B.  Charpentier,  was  also  a  writer  on  literary  his- 
tory. The  work  I  refer  to  is  entitled  Les  Etudes 
sur  les  Peres  de  I'Eglise.  The  literary  works  are 
Histoire  de  la  Renaissance  des  Lettres  en  Europe  au 
XVe  Siecle,  Essai  sur  I Histoire  litteraire  du  Moyen 
Age,  and  Tableau  de  la  Litterature  Franqaise  aux 
XVe  et  XV Ie  Siecles.  He  also  published  in  1853  a 
Logique  Franchise. 


Critics  and  Scientists.  337 

One  of  the  most  eminent  of  Protestant  theologians 
is  Pressense.  Edmond  Dehoult  de  Pressens^  was 
born  at  Paris  in  1824.  He  studied  in  Swiss  and 
German  universities,  became  the  friend  of  Neander 
during  his  student  life  at  Berlin,  took  high  rank  as  a 
prsacher,  writer,  and  legislator,  and  became  widely 
known  as  a  vigorous  advocate  of  moderate  principles 
in  government,  free  education,  and  liberal  views  on 
most  subjects.  His  works  are  Conferences  sur  le 
Christianisr.ie  dans  son  Application  aux  Questions 
sodales,  Du  Catholicisime  en  France,  Histoire  des 
Trois  Premiers  Siecles  de  VEglise  Chretienne,  L'ficole 
Critique  et  Jesu- Christ,  La  Liberte  religieuse  en 
Europe  depuis  1870. 

Bishop  Dupanloup  was  a  vigorous  writer  on  the 
Catholic  side.  Felix  Antoine  Philibert  Dupanloup 
(1802-1878)  was  born  in  Savoy.  He  was  much 
interested  in  the  subject  of  education.  Among  his 
works  are  De  V Education,  La  femme  studieuse, 
L' Enfant,  and  Le  Mariage  Chretien. 

Naming  now  a  few  of  those  who  have  been  most 
remarkable  in  science  or  in  writings  on  industrial 
progress,  we  have  to  consider  the  works  of  a  great 
surgeon  like  Velpeau,  of  a  master  in  archaeological 
research  like  Quatrefages,  of  a  microscopist  and 
discoverer  of  the  germs  of  disease  like  Pasteur,  of  an 
authority  in  architecture  like  Viollet-le-Duc,  and  of 
an  authority  in  taste  and  the  philosophy  of  digestion 
like  Brillat-Savarin. 

Alfred  Armand  Louis  Marie  Velpeau  (1795-1867) 
was  one  of  the  greatest  of  surgeons.  Among  the 
works  which  he  found  time  to  write,  in  the  midst  of 
his  arduous  duties,  the  most  valuable  are  his  Traite 
de  FAnatomie  Chirurgicale  and  his  Nouveaux  Ele- 
ments de  Medicine  Operatoire. 

Claude  Fra^ois  Lallemand  (1790-1854),  born  at 
Metz,  was  also  a  famous  medical  authority.  His 
most  important  work  was  Recherches  anatomico- 
pathologiques  sur  T  EncephaJes  et  ses  Dependances. 

Felix  Archimede  Pouchet  (1800-1872),  born  at 


338  'French  Literature. 

Rouen,  was  a  most  prolific  writer  on  medical  matters. 
His  experiments  on  spontaneous  generation  were 
made  in  opposition  to  those  of  Pasteur.  His  most 
important  works  were  Theorie  Positive  de  V  Ovulation 
spontanee  et  de  la  Fecundation  des  Mammiferes  et 
de  I'Espfae  humaine,  Histoire  des  /Sciences  naturelles 
au  Moyen  Age,  Traite  de  la  Generation  spontanee, 
Les  infiniment  Grands  et  les  infiniment  Petits. 

Claude  Servais  Pouillet  (1791-1868)  was  a  much- 
admired  lecturer.  He  also  invented  instruments 
for  measuring  the  varying  compressibility  of  gases, 
originated  a  theory  of  the  cause  of  the  sun's  heat, 
and  invented  an  instrument  for  measuring  its  heat. 
He  wrote  many  scientific  works  on  electricity,  the 
elasticity  of  fluids,  the  latent  heat  of  vapors,  the 
height,  speed,  and  direction  of  clouds,  and  other 
subjects  of  kindred  nature.  His  principal  work  was 
Notions  generates  de  Physique  et  de  Meteo^ologie. 
•-  Louis  Pasteur,  the  great  chemist,  was  born  at 
Dole  in  1822.  His  discoveries  have  been  exceed- 
ingly valuable  to  mankind,  and  there  is  good  rea- 
son to  hope  that  through  his  researches  measures 
may  be  taken  by  which  many  terrible  scourges  of 
humanity  will  cease  to  ravage  civilized  lands,  even 
as  the  advance  of  smallpox  has  been  checked  by 
inoculation  and  vaccination.  His  writings  have 
been  Nouvel  Exemple  de  Fermentation,  Etudes  sur 
le  Vin,  Etudes  sur  le  Vinaigre,  Etudes  sur  la  Mala- 
die  des  Vers  de  Soie,  and  a  few  other  works.  His 
controversy  with  Pouchet  on  the  subject  of  sponta- 
neous generation  has  already  been  mentioned.  Pas- 
teur argued  against  spontaneous  generation,  and  his 
experiments  have  proved  that  all  fermentation  and 
many  forms  of  disease  are  due  to  the  development 
of  germs  of  microscopic  minuteness.  Pasteur  was  a 
pupil  of  the  famous  chemist  Dumas;  and  his  first 
step  in  the  great  discoveries  he  made  was  taken  in 
conducting  the  investigation,  committed  to  him  by 
Dumas,  into  the  disease  which  threatened  to  destroy 
all  the  silk- worms  of  France  and  Italy. 


Critics  and  Scientists.  339 

One  of  the  most  eminent  of  living  scientists  is 
Jean  Louis  Armarid  de  Quatrefages  de  Breau,  born 
in  1810.  His  essay  entitled  Theorie  dun  Coup  de 
Canon,  his  work  Sur  les  Aerolithes  and  that  De 
I'  Extroversion  de  la  Vessie,  his  Etudes  sur  les  Types 
i  »/•' rieurs  de  V  Embranchement  des  Anneles,  his 
J*hysiologie  comparee,  Metamorphose  de  rHomme  et 
des  Animaux  indicate  the  variety  of  his  studies. 
He  has  also  written  Les  Polynesians  et  leur  Migra- 
tions, Charles  Darwin  et  ses  Precurseurs  Francois, 
La  Race  Prussienne,  and  L'EspZce  humaine. 

One  of  the  greatest  of  recent  French  geologists 
was  Jean  Baptiste  Elie  de  Beaumont  (1798-1874), 
born  at  Canon.  In  conjunction  with  Dufrenoy,  he 
devoted  many  years  to  the  preparation  of  a  geologi- 
cal map  of  France.  His  chief  writings  were  Coup 
d'CEil  sur  les  Mines,  Observations  Geologiques  sur  les 

.  differentes  Formations  sur  le  Systime  des  Vosges, 
Recherches  sur  quelquesunes  des  Revolutions  de  la 
Surface  du  Globe,  and  Voyage  Metallurgique  en 
Angleterre. 

Here,  perhaps,  though  somewhat  out  of  place, 
may  be  mentioned  a  writer  in  French,  who  takes 
rank  as  the  father  of  geology  as  a  science,  the  great 
Swiss  investigator,  Horace  Benedict  de  Saussure 
(1740-1799),  born  at  Conches  near  Geneva.  Four 
years  before  his  death  Geneva  was  annexed  to 
France.  Hence  he  may  in  more  than  one  sense  be 
considered  as  entitled  to  a  place  in  French  litera- 
ture. His  Voyages  dans  les  Alpes  marked  an  era  in 
the  history  of  modern  science.  Besides  this  work 
and  sveral  in  Latin,  he  wrote  Observations  sur 
r  Ecorce  des  Feuilles  et  des  Petales,  and  Sur'lHy- 

'  grometrie.     This  last  Cuvier  considered  one  of  the 

'  most  important  contributions  to  science  in  that  age. 
One  of  the  ablest  chemists  and  writers  on  chemi- 
cal subjects  France  has  produced  is  Jean  Baptiste 
Dumas,  born  at  Alais  in  the  department  of  Gard   in 
1800.     Lavoisier,  about  1787,  when  he  gave  it  its 

1  earlier  nomenclature,  may  be  almost  said  to  have 


340  French  Literature. 

organized  chemistry  into  a  science.  Other  French- 
men, Berthollet,  Fourcroy,  Vauquelin,  Gay-Lussac, 
Becquerel,  Ampere,  Decandolle,  and  Provost,  did 
much  to  further  its  progress.  Dumas's  contributions 
to  the  advance  of  the  science  have  been  very  impor- 
tant. His  chief  works  are  Traite  de  Chimie  appli- 
quee  aux  Arts,  Lemons  sur  la  Philosophic  chimique, 
and  Essai  sur  la  Statique  chimique  des  Etres 
Organises. 

A  writer  who  has  done  much  to  popularize  scien- 
tific studies  is  Jean  Francois  Elisee  Keclus,  born  in 
the  Gironde  in  1830.  Driven  into  exile  by  the 
establishment  of  the  Second  Empire,  he  traveled  in 
many  parts  of  the  world.  Returning  to  France  in 
1857,  he  became  successively  editor  of  several  im- 
portant periodicals,  and  wrote  his  books  of  travel  and 
his  La  Terre.  He  was  implicated  in  the  disorders 
of  the  Commune,  and  again  became  an  exile,  to 
return  however  under  the  general  amnesty.  His 
Les  Continents  and  L' Ocean  are  handsomely  illus- 
trated books. 

Figuier  and  Flammarion  also  have  been  prolific 
writers  on  scientific  subjects. 

Guillaume  Louis  Figuier  was  born  in  1819.  His 
works  are  La  Terre  avant  le  Deluge,  La  Terre  et  les 
Mers,  Histoire  des  Plantes,  Zoophytes  et  Mollusques, 
Les  Insectes,  Les  Poissons,  Les  Mammifires, 
L'Homme  primitif,  Les  Races  humaines,  Savants  de 
I'Antiquite,  Savants  du  Moyen  Age,  Savants  de  la 
Renaissance,  Savants  du  12e  Siecle,  Savants  du  18e 
Siecle,  Le  Savant  du  Foyer,  and  Les  grandes  Inven- 
tions. 

Camille  Flammarion,  eminent  as  an  astronomer, 
was  born  in  1842.  He  has  been,  like  Reclus,  an 
expert  in  balloon  ascensions.  His  principal  works 
are  La  Pluralite  des  Mondes  Habites,  Les  Mondes 
imaginaires  et  les  Mondes  reels,  Les  Merveilles  ce- 
lestes, Dieu  dans  la  Nature,  Histoire  du  del,  Contem- 
plations scientifiques,  Voyages  aeriens,  L"1  Atmospheret 


Critics  and  Scientists.  341 

Histoire  dun  Plaritte,  Les  Terres  du  Ceil.  His 
style  is  very  animated  and  picturesque. 

Guillemin  is  another  author  of  illustrated  scientific 
books,  such  as  Les  Cometes,  Le  del,  Les  Phe7iomenes 
de  la  Physique,  Les  Applications  de  la  Physique. 

In  architecture  we  have  Eugene  Emmanuel  Viollet- 
le-Duc,  born  at  Paris  in  1814.  Besides  his  His- 
toire  dune  Maison,  and  other  works  on  architectural 
subjects,  he  has  written  a  Memoir e  sur  la  Defense  de 
Paris. 

In  literature  on  the  arts  we  have  Auguste 
Alexandre  Philippe  Charles  Blanc  (1813-1882), 
born  at  Castres  and  trained  to  be  an  engraver.  He 
held  for  many  years  the  post  of  Director  of  the  Fine 
Arts.  He  has  published  many  works  on  artists, 
among  which  is  his  finely  illustrated  Histoire  des 
Peintres  de  toutes^  les  Ecoles :  Ecole  Franchise, 
Ecole  HoUandaise,  Ecole  J<lamande,r  Ecole  Anglaise, 
Ecole  Espagnole,  £cole  Italienne,  Ecole  Allemande. 
One  of  his  most  valuable  works  is  his  Grammaire 
des  Arts  du  Dessin. 

Other  writers  on  art  are  Jacquemart,  with  his 
Histoire  de  la  Ceramique  de  tons  les  Temps ;  Du- 
plessis,  with  his  Les  Aferveilles  de  la  Gravure ;  and 
Sauzay,  with  his  La  Verrerie  depuis  les  Temps  les 
plus  recules  jusqii1  a  nos  Jours. 

In  gastronomy,  we  have  the  famous  Brillat- 
Savarin  (1755-1826),  with  his  wise  and  witty 
lucubrations  on  the  art  of  living  well,  in  his  Phy- 
siologie  du  Gout. 


342  French  Literature. 


XXII. 

FRENCH  WRITERS  OF  LOUISIANA. 

In  1682,  La  Salle  descended  the  Mississippi, 
claimed  for  France  the  magnificent  valley,  and 
named  the  land  Louisiana,  in  honor  of  the  Grand 
Monarque. 

But  the  first  French  colony  settled  in  the  great 
valley  was  that  planted  by  Iberville  at  Biloxi  in 
1699.  The  colony  was  removed  to  New  Orleans 
by  Bienville  in  1706,  and  remained  under  French 
rule  until  1762,  when  it  was  by  secret  treaty  trans- 
ferred to  Spain,  which  took  possession  some  years 
later  and  held  it  until  1800.  It  was  then  again 
restored  to  France.  Three  years  later,  Napoleon 
sold  it  to  the  United  States  for  fifteen  millions  of 
dollars. 

The  vast  region  originally  embraced  under  the 
term  Louisiana  has  been  cut  up -into  a  number  of 
different  States.  But  much  the  larger  portion  of 
the  French  population  are  those  whose  ancestors 
settled  in  the  lands  now  within  the  State  of  Louis- 
iana. 

These  French  families,  amid  all  the  changes  that 
have  come  over  the  land,  have  clung  closely  to 
their  language  and  traditions.  Their  mode  of  life 
has  remained  unchanged,  and  they  have  largely 
indulged  in  the  practice  of  sending  their  sons  to 
France  for  their  education.  Many  wealthy  families 
have  gathered  large  libraries;  the  literature  of  the 
fatherland  has  been,  as  a  general  rule,  the  only  lit- 
erature read  ;  refined  and  cultivated  social  influences 
in  the  great  sea- port  have  increased  the  devotion  to 
this  literature  ;  and  there  has  naturally  been  a  ten- 
dency to  develop  a  home  literature  in  the  tongue 


French    Writers  of  Louisiana.  343 

still  used  in  tli e  bosom  of  very  many  families,  where 
English  is  never  heard. 

A  few,  at  least,  of  these  writers  should  be  given 
a  place  in  a  sketch  of  French  literature  prepared 
for  use  in  this  country.  At  the  head  of  this  liter- 
ary body,  by  common  consent,  stands  Gayarre,  who 
has  for  a  series  of  years  been  giving  interesting  Con- 
ferences in  New  Orleans  on  the  scenes  and  incidents 
of  the  first  French  Revolution,  after  a  life  spent  in 
literary  labor  in  two  tongues,  principally  on  histor- 
ical works. 

Charles  E.  Arthur  Gayarre  was  born  in  1805  of  an 
old  Louisianian  family  of  Spanish  descent.  His  first 
work  was  an  essay  on  the  history  of  his  native 
State.  This  was  followed  by  his  Histoire  de  la 
Lnnisiane,  which  reached  the  period  of  Spanish 
rule,  and  was  warmly  praised  in  France  for  its  clear- 
ness, simplicity,  and_-  good  taste.  Several  other 
works  on  Louisiana,  its  Romance,  and  its  History ; 
a  dramatic  novel ;  a  history  of  Philip  II.,  of  Spain  ; 
a  comedy ;  some  pamphlets,  and  some  lectures, 
make  up  the  rest  of  what  he  has  published,  and 
these  writings  were  in  English. 

Victor  Sejour,  an  actor  as  well  as  dramatic 
author,  whose  life  has  been  mainly  spent  in  France, 
though  he  was  of  New  Orleans  parentage,  was  born 
in  that  city  in  1809.  His  chief  works  have  been 
de  Napoleon,  a  drama  in  verse  entitled, 
,  La  Chute  de  Sejan,  a  prose  drama  called 
III-,  L' Argent  du  Diable,  Les  Noces  Veni- 
tiennes.  Andre,  Gerard,  and  Le  Martyr  du  Cceur,  the 
last  written  in  conjunction  with  Bresil. 

Frai^ois  Dominique  Rouquette  was  born  at  New 
Orleans  in  1810,  and  educated  at  Nantes  in  France. 
He  has  published  two  collections  of  poems,  Les 
Meschacebennes  and  Flews  d'Amerique,  to  the  latter 
of  which  writers  like  Mery  and  fimile  Deschamps 
have  awarded  high  praise. 

The  brother  of  this  poet,  the  Abbe*  Adrien  Rou- 
quette, also  a  poet,  has  died  but  a  short  time  ago.  A 


344  French  Literature. 

famous  recluse,  wlio  only  came  to  the  city  to  get 
books,  he  was  reputed  to  be  familiar  with  all  the 
wild  things  of  the  woods,  from  the  Indians  to  the 
birds.  Like  his  brother,  he  was  born  at  New 
Orleans  and  educated  at  Nantes.  To  his  first  pub- 
lication, Les  Savanes,  Poesies  Americaines,  Sainte- 
Beuve,  Auguste  Brizeau,  and  Barthelemi  all  gave 
a  cordial  welcome.  This  collection  was  followed  by 
a  volume  of  sacred  poems,  enti titled  Fleurs  Sau- 
vages,  and  a  work  in  eloquent  prose  called  La  The- 
baide  en  Amerique,  ou  Apologie  de  la  Vie  Solitaire 
et  Contemplative.  His  later  works  were  L 'Anto- 
niade,  ou  la  Solitude  avec  Dieu  .  Poeme  Eremetique  ; 
Le  Conciliabule  Infernal;  and  Poemes  Patriotiques. 
He  also  issued  some  of  his  poems  in  English. 

Charles  Delery  was  born  in  1815,  of  a  Louisian- 
ian  family  of  Acadian  French  origin.  He  studied 
medicine  in  Paris.  His  earliest  production  was  a 
pamphlet,  Essai  sur  la  Liberte.  Later,  he  published 
fitudes  sur  les  Passions  ;  Ftivre  Jaune ;  Confederes 
et  Federaux;  and  Memiore  sur  Tfipidemie  de  Ftivre 
Jaune  qui  a  regne  a  la  Nouvelle  Orleans  et  dans  les 
Campagnes. 

Charles  Oscar  Dugue  was  born  at  New  Orleans 
in  1821,  and  educated  in  Paris.  His  first  publica- 
tion was  a  volume  of  poems,  entitled  Essais  Poe- 
tiques.  This  was  followed  by  a  drama  called  Milo 
ou  la  Mort  de  la  Salle,  and  another  play,  entitled 
Le  Cyyne  ou  Mingo.  He  has  also  written  some 
philosophical  works. 

L.  Placide  Canonge,  now  music-critic  for 
L'Abeille,  the  able  French  paper  of  New  Orleans, 
has  been  a  prolific  writer  for  the  stage.  He  was 
born  in  1822,  and  educated  in  Paris.  He  began  his 
literary  work  with  a  vaudeville,  Le  Maudit  Passe- 
port.  Following  this,  came  the  plays  of  Oaston  de 
St.  Elme,  L*  Ambassadeur  d1  Autriche,  Un  Grand 
d'Espange,  Histoire  sous  Charles  Quint,  France  et 
Espagne,  Gomte  de  Monte  Cristo,  Comte  de  Car- 
magnola,  and  the  comedy  of  Qui  perd  gagne.  He 


French   Writers  of  Louisiana  345 

re-published  also  from  Girardin's  paper,  La  Presse, 
political  articles  which  he  had  contributed  to  it 
during  the  eventful  struggles  of  1848.  This  series 
was  entitled  Institutions  Americaines.  His  lyrics 
are  remarkable  for  fire,  sweetness,  and  tenderness. 
The  most  touching  of  these  is  his  Brise  du  Sud, 
written  in  exile.  Educated  in  France  at  the  time 
when  the  enthusiasm  of  the  romantic  school  was  at 
its  highest,  he  has  imbibed  all  the  fervor  and  fresh- 
ness which  that  school  wished  to  import  into 
literature. 

Henri  Vignaud  was  born  in  1828.  He  began 
life  as  a  journalist  in  the  town  of  Thibodaux, 
Louisiana.  His  first  work  was  L*  Anthropologie, 
published  serially  in  La  Renaissance  Louisianaise, 
a  periodical  established  in  New  Orleans  in  1860  by 
himself,  Canonge,  and  Hiriart.  He  went  to  Paris 
in  1862,  engaged  in  journalism  there,  and  became 
later  a  member  of  the  United  States  legation  in 
Paris,  after  having  had  some  diplomatic  experience 
as  attache,  to  the  Roumanian  legation.  He  holds 
high  rank  as  a  theatrical  critic.  His  literary  work 
has  consisted  chiefly  of  critical  work  for  journals 
and  memorials  to  scientific  societies.  Albert 
Delpit  and  Eugdne  Guiraud  should  be  named  along 
with  Yignaud,  as  Louisianians  of  literary  mark 
now  resident  in  Paris.  I  have  already  spoken  of 
their  novels,  plays,  and  operas. 

Adolphe  Calongue  was  born  at  New  Orleans  in 
1836.  His  literary  productions  have  been  poerns, 
among  which  may  be  mentioned  his  Hymne  a  la 
Memoire  de  Madame  la  Generale  Beauregard  and 
his  ode  Sur  le  SuppHee  de  Maximilien. 

In  1847,  there  appeared  a  series  of  sketches, 
spirited  and  graphic,  of  the  celebrities  of  the 
New  Orleans  of  that  time,  forty-eight  in  all.  It 
was  published  anonymously,  but  is  generally 
accredited  to  Cyprien  Dufour,  an  able  lawyer 
of  the  Crescent  City.  The  work  is  entitled 
jEsquisses  Locales,  and  contains  felicitous  por- 


346  French  Literature. 

traitures  of  Gayarre,  1'Abbe*  Eouquette,  and  ^lacide 
Canonge,  as  they  were  thirty-five  years  ago. 

There  was  published  a  few  years  ago  in  New 
Orleans  a  romance,  L1  Habitation  des  St-  Ybars,  by 
Dr.  Alfred  Mercier,  Secretary  of  the  Athenee 
Louisianaise.  This  work  is  intended  to  depict  life 
on  a  Louisianian  plantation  before  the  war,  but  the 
narrative  laps  over  the  war,  and  presents  also  a 
picture  of  its  results.  The  style  is  vivid  and  glow- 
ing, and  some  of  the  scenes  are  attractive ;  but  the 
general  spirit  of  the  book  is  sombre,  and  it  closes 
with  a  perfect  glut  of  horrors.  It  surely  can  not  be 
in  all  respects  a  true  delineation  of  family  life 
among  the  French  people  of  Louisiana.  The  most 
interesting  thing  in  the  book  is  its  too  infrequent 
introduction  of  the  patois  used  by  the  colored 
people,  the  Creole  or  Gumbo  French. 

Of  recent  publication  also  are  HHistoire  des  Etats- 
Unis,  suivie  de  VHistoire  de  la  Louisiane,  by 
Madame  M.  D.  Girard  ;  and  Histoire  de  la  Louisiane, 
racontee  aux  Enfants  Louisianais,  by  Madame  Laure 
Auqlry. 

Among  the  poets  of  an  earlier  day  should  have 
been  mentioned  Louis  Allard  and  Constant 
Lepouse. 

Since  the  manuscript  of  this  work  passed  out  of 
my  hands,  works  of  fiction  have  appeared  in  France, 
which  so  fully  substantiate  the  confident  hope,  ex- 
pressed in  the  foregoing  pages,  of  the  re-appear- 
ance of  better  taste  and  purer  genius,  that  I  must 
name  at  least  one  or  two  of  these  recent  works  be- 
fore closing. 

'A  work  of  admirable  humor  and  freshness  of 
style  and  spirit,  La  Neuvaine  de  Colette,  appeared 
anonymously  a  winter  ago  in  the  pages  of  the  Revue 
des  Deux  Mondes.  It  was  welcomed  witli  eager 
praise  by  a  public  sated  at  last  with  the  dreary 
meannesses  and  revolting  details  of  the  so-called 
realistic  school.  It  became  immensely  popular. 

A  still  more  favorably  received  story,  because  of 


34:7 

its  patrioric  purpose — it  deals  with  the  stress  of  the 
Franco-Prussian  war — was  Mademoiselle  Solange, 
by  Francois  de  Julliot.  Its  well-drawn  characters, 
its  provincial  atmosphere,  its  truth  to  nature  in  the 
delineation  of  the  heroine's  growth  in  character  and 
her  waking  to  nobler  aims  in  life  at  the  touch  of 
feeling  for  her  country's  needs,  make  it  a  delightful 
romance. 

Family  affection,  girlish  grace,  womanly  pride 
and  strength  of  character,  purity  of  life,  and  nobility 
of  purpose,  triumphing  over  self-seeking  and  love 
of  luxury,  are  still  to  be  found  in  the  works  of  genius 
offered  us  by  French  literature,  as  well  as  by  all  the 
great  literatures  of  the  world. 

A  great  people,  with  a  great  language  and  a  liter- 
ature in  the  past  of  immense  range  and  variety, 
cannot  continue  to  produce  imaginative  art  of  a 
wholly  debasing  kind.  Genius  is  a  ferment  that 
clears  in  the  end,  and  leaves  as  its  product  a  pure 
and  refreshing  wine. 


INDEX. 


PAC.K     !  PAGE 

About 27,310       Bernard 3)9 

Abrantes  (Madame  d') 256       Bertaut 68 

Aehard 314       Berthet 341 

Aime  of  Vareunes   40       Beze  ide)  ... .    02 

Alembert  (d'l 16.  1S2       Biart  ..    ..322 

A  lexandre  of  Beruay 40       Bida 29,  4 2 

Alexandrine  verse  40       Blanc  (Charles). 341 

Allard 346       UltUlv  (Louw) 206 

Ampere  (J.J.) 326       Blaze  de  Bury 28,329 

Ampere  <  A.  Ml     £16       Bodin ". 76 

Auivot     7'.'       B  etie  ulela) 71 

Anais-Segalas  'Madame) 297       Boileau 118,  133 

Aneelot 2«7      Bonaparte  (Luctea)  254 

Andrieux.. . 247       Bonaparte  (Charles)   255 

Audrv  (Madame) 3)6       Bonaparte  i Louis)   255 

Arago     2H    i    Honaidide) 25S 

Arnaiild   93.95       honiface   303 

Arnault 24.)        I  ossuet 14,130 

An.uet    157       Bmifflers 145 

Anlnir  iK'iiiK) .Jf.    40       Boulsinvilliera 140 

AuhiKiieid'i "..    67       Boiirdaloue 14,136 

Aul»ign6(  Merle  d1) 278        Boursanlt 141 

Auca-sin  et  Nicolette  4.'       l'.ie..euf 135 

AiiKier 20!)        Breliat 321 

Aotioy  (the  Countess  d'j 1 13       Hi-nlat-Savariu 341 

Autran 2".'0        Hrizeux         292 

Ba'if 63        Browses  (de)   1^9 

Bailly     20 i       Bioii^liain,  ..n  La  Pucelle 167 

Ballanche  ..   ..    259       lirnius.  Romance  of 40 

Baldwin  <.f  Flnnders 41.53       Buffon  16.195 

Balz.iu  iljuez  lei ','.)    '    Bulwer-Lytton,  on  Montaigne..    12 

Balzac  CHonorddf) 26.  3- M  "         "  Lesage 17 

Baranteidei 29,273  "         "  Moliere.  103,  1(19 

Barhier    2'.U  "         "Racine 124 

Baron 108.  1W.  HI  "         "  Saint-Simon  ISO 

Bartasidin   67  "            "         "  Voltaire.15",  109 

Barth6lemy  (I'AbW) „  188  "         "  Lamartine..  2S5 

Burtiiez 1S-.I       Byron,  on  Madame  de  Stael 219 

Basselin :•'•',       <    ilianis 239 

Baudelaire  2S  Calas.  Voltaire's  defence  of  the 

Bautain   26'.  family    165 

Bayle 1««i       Calpivne.ie  (Lai 07 

Bay le  (Consul)   30J       Calongne 345 

Beast-fable    41       Calvin. 6-2 

Beanliarnais  (  Hortensei..     .    .    2 ".5       ('ancmire 344 

Beaumarchais  If  rii|>enVne  2;'.» 

Beaiiuiont  Kiel 26<l        ('apelirlu 321 

Beaumuiit  V.tssv    3.'l       Carrel 272,279 

Beaumont  (Elie  de) :^'i      c  i.vhis  < Madame  de) l.Ml 

Bfaiixee 1-S         Cfi/otte 1!XI 

IV-.lolliere   3il       Chamfort   1»3 

Helliyniii)  (M       Champollion 2il 

Bellman    ...   6-1  t;6      Cliampgiu'on-FIgeae 231 

Belloy  (de)   1*0    :   Chapelain   87.88 

l:el,,t    27.  *K"I.  319       Cliapelle 14tj 

ItArangpr  (d«)    21.  2*.  272.  2<]       Charl.-s  d'Oi  leans 55 

Uenutrdin  de  Saint- Pierre. . .  16,  194       (Jhari>entier 336 

349 


350 


INDEX. 


PAGE 

Charriere  (Madame  de)  ~2l 

Charron 70 

Chat-tier 53 

Chasles  (Pliilarete) 325 

Chasles  (fimile)  3:;i 

Chateaubriand  (de)  ....20,  203,  210 

Chaulieu  U'Abb6  de) 146 

Cheaier  (Andre)  191 

Chenier  (Marie  Joseph)  192 

Chennevieres 321 

Cherbuliez 31" 

Chevalier 200 

Chrestien '..  ...    77 

Chrestien  of  Troyes 40 

Christine  de  Pisan 53 

Claretie  300,  319 

Code  Napol6on 229 

Comities  (de) 10,  50 

Comte  205 

Condillac 10 

Condprcet 195 

Considerant 240 

Constant 21 0.  221 ,  225 

Constant,  on  Mud.  de  Stael. . . .  220 

Coqnerel     27'.) 

Cormeiiin 272 

Corneille  (Pierre.) 13.88 

Corneiile  (Tin. mas) 14 J 

Cottin  (Madame) 220,  251 

Coney  (tie) 41 

Courier 2',i 

Court  de  Gebelin 188 

Cousin 29.  2tJ3 

Craven  (Madame) 21),  321 

Crebillon  (de)  10,  1-18 

Crottet 279 

Crusades,  changes  produced  by  4S 

Cnvelier 53 

Cmier 229 

Cnvier,  on  Buff  on 19.~> 

Cyrano  de  Bergerac 100 

Dacier  (Madame) 146 

Daguesseau 151,  153 

I>am  iron 205 

Danehet 240 

Darn  250 

Daubenton 197,  230 

D'Anbigne, 07 

D'Aubign-HMerle) 278 

Daudet  27,  319 

Daurat  03 

Deffand  (Madame  du) 185 

D.-luvigne 280 

Delery 344 

Delille 180 

Demogeot  Si.  331 

Delpit 300,321 

Desaugiers 219 

Desbordes-Valmore  (Madame).  287 

Descartes 92 

Deschamps 52 

Desmarets 86,  87,  99 

Desportes 68 

Destouches 148 

Diderot 10,  182 

Drneys 145 

Ducis 180 

Duclos 188 

Dudevant  (Madame). . .  .26,  307-309 


Uupuytren 

f!lie  de  Beaumont, 
ftnanlt 


PAGE 

Dufour 34.-) 

Dugue 344 

iManarsais. li^8 

Dumas  (Alexandra) 24,  293 

iJiimas  (:e  Jeiine) 316 

Dumas  (ehemis-t) 339 

Dniiiont Ai7 

Dmnoiiriex 203,  226 

iHipanloup 337 

Dupont i 29'J 

Durand  (Madame) 320 

230 
339 
322 
180 
244 
186 
815 
76 
45 
332 
279 
138 
298 
315 
318 
310 
340 
31!) 
139 
110 

279 
191 

253 
205 
146 
23(i 
246 
49 
1 


Kn  fan  tin   

itpinay  ( Madame  de) 

KrckmaiiP-Chatrian 27, 

fitienne  (fistienne) 

Kabliaux 

Fallonx  (de) 


Kauriel 

Fenelon 14,137, 

Feuillet 

Ft''val 

Feydeau  27. 


Fignier 

Flammarion 

Flaubert  

Fleuhier  

Fleury  (I'Abbe)   .... 
Florence  (Deleelnze's  Histoiy 
of). 


Florian  

F'ontanes 

Fontaues,  on  Chateaubriand... 
Fontenelle 

Fourier 


Fourier  (Charles) 

Frangoisof  Rues... 

Franks 

French  People 

Language 

"        Heroic  Metre 

"        Fiction 

Freron   

Fresnel 

Froissart 

Gaboriau  

Galland 

Gamier. 


.241- 


Gautier  of  Coinsv  

Gautier  (Theophile) — 295, 

•'        on  Art 

Gayarre 

'Gay-Lussac 

Geiee  

Genlis  (Madame  de) 

Gennevraye 

Geoffrin  (Madame) 

(ierson... 


310- 


Gt'-rnzez 

Geruzez,  on  1'Hopital 

"La  Fontaine 

Gilbert 

Gillot 

Girard 

Girardin  (Madame  de) 

Gotnbault , 


168 
23 
177 
235 
50 
319 
143 
6S 
46 
312 
312 
343 

49 
228 
322 
186 

53 
331 

71 
127 
177 

340 

295 

97 


IXDEX. 


351 


PACK 

Gomberville 'J7 

Goncourt  (de) 321 

Gondi  (Paul  de)  13-3 

Gournay  i  Mademoiselle  de) —    74 

QoKlan. 294,  310 

Graindor  of  Douai 39 

Grasset 279 

Grebau  (the  brothers) 54 

— «-t 177 

Greville 28,320 

Grimm 183 

Gueneed'Abbe) 178 

Guerin  (Maurice  de) 333 

Gueriu  (Eugenie  de) 333 

Guillaume  of  Lorris 47 

Guillemiu 341 

Guiraud 287 

Guizot 29,  269 

on  the  Crusades 48 

"  la  Princesse  de  Cleves.130 
"       "  Philippe  de  Comines,  56 

Guy-Patin 99 

Halevy 318 

Hamilton  (de) 147 

Hardy 86 

Heine,  on  the  Marseillaise.   ...  280 

Helvetius 184 

Herberay  des  Essarts    62 

Herbelot  (d')  113 

Heroic  Age 3*1 

Hetzel   883 

Hoi  bach  (d')      1*3 

Houdetot  (Madame  d'.i 187 

Hugo 25,289-291 

Hundred  Years'  War 49 

Houssaye 315 

Huon  of  Villeneuve 39 

Huon  le  Roy 46 

Jacquemart 341 

Jacqueuiart  GelSe 49 

Janin 28,326 

Jasmin 300 

Jean  Borel 40 

Jean  of  Boves  46 

Jeau  of  Flagy 39 

Jean  of  Meuug 47,  48 

Jean  Michel  of  Angers.  54 

Jodelle   66 

Join ville  (de) 47 

Jouffroy  29,  264 

Karr  ( Alphonse)  312 

Hook  (Paul  del 26,  302 

Kock  (Henri  de) 303 

Laboulaye 29,  313 

La  Bruyere 139 

Lacepede 237 

Lacordaire  29,  262 

La  Fayette  (Madame  de) 130 

Lafont 296 

La  Fontaine  14,127,141 

La  Harpe  idei 179 

Lallemand  337 

Lally-Tollendal 167 

Laniartine  (de) 28,  29,  :>S4 

Lambert  the  Short 40 

Lamennais  (de) 29,  261 

Lamotte     14C 

Lancelot    96 

Lanfrey 273 


PAGE 

Language,  French 1 

Langue  d'Oil 9 

Langue  d'Oc .....' 9 

La  Xoue 180 

La  Noue  (de) 76 

La  Prade     296 

La  Touche 180 

Las  Cases 256 

Lays  of  Exploits .   . .   32 

Lebrun ...     180 

Legare,  on  Daguesseau 152 

Legare.  quoting  Prince  d'Aren- 

berg  on  Figaro  201 

Legouve  (E.) 296 

Legouve(G.) 248 

Lemaistre 93 

Lemaistre  de  Sacy 96 

Lemercier 249 

Lemierre 180 

Lemoine  (Le  Pere) 99 

LenonnaBt 29 

Lepouse 346 

Leroux  265 

Leroy  ( Pierre) 77 

Leroy  ( Huon) 46 

Lesage 17,  148 

Lesueur 322 

Leveque 332 

L'Hopital  (De) 70 

Lingua-Franca  47 

Lisle.  Rouget  (de)  280 

Littre 335 

Lomenie  (de) 332 

Lome'nie  (de),  on  Chateaubri- 
and  210 

Louis  Napol6on ~'74 

Louvet 202 

Lovers  of  Provence  (The) 42 

Mably  (1'Abbe  de) 190 

Macaulay,  on  Provence 8 

"  Feneion  138 

"  Saint-Simon 143 

"  Voltaire 161.  164 

'•  "  Dumont 2\!7 

Mace 3!4 

Mackintosh,  on  Mad.  de  Stael..  217 

Maillard 54 

Maimbourg 140 

Mainteuon  (Madame  de) 144 

Mairet 87 

Maistre  (Joseph  de) 225 

Maistiv  i  Xa  vier  de) 2^6 

Malebrauclie 140 

Malherbe • 77 

Malot 322 

Maquet 314 

Marguerite  of  Navarre  . .  .10,  60,  62 

Marivaux  (de.) 178 

Marmier 313 

Blarmontel 109,  178 

Marot CO 

Marseillaise,  La 280 

Martin  313 

Mascaron 139 

Massillon   14,  139 

Maynard 77,  78 

Mazure 279 

Menage 108 

Blenot 54 


352 


INDEX. 


FAGS 

Mercier 346 

Merimee 304,  305 

Mery 292 

Mezerai 140 

Michaud 251 

Michaux 237 

Michelet 29,  278 

Mignet 277 

Milievoye 253 

Miotde  M61ito '. 257 

Mirabeau 193,  203 

Mistral 301 

Mole ei7 

Moliere 14, 103,  1 14 

Monstrelet 51 

Montegut 330 

Montepin 321 

Montaigne  (de) 12,  72 

Montaigne,  on  Amyot 72 

Montalembert  (de)  29,  259 

"      on    Lacor- 

daire ....  262 

Montesquieu  (de) 15,  154,  155 

Montfleury 141 

Montluc  (Blaise  de) 76 

Montausier 81 

Moore,  on  French  Heroic  Verse,  168 

"        "  Constant 225 

Mornay,  Philippe  de 83 

Murger  299 

Musset  (de) 28,  297 

Mystery  and  Miracle  Plays 54 

Memoirs  of  Bernard  Palissy. . .    61 

the  Leaguers 83 

"          the  Huguenots 83 

"         Richelieu 86 

"         Richelieu's  Time..  102 
"         Cardinal  de  Retz..  132 
"         the  Due  de  Saint- 
Simon 141,149 

"         La  Fare    146 

"         Mad.  de  Staal 147 

Voltaire 170 

"         Rousseau 174 

Bailly -. 202 

"         Chateaubriand ....  206 
Madame  de  Stael..  219 

"         Dumouriez 226 

Dumont 227 

Madame  de  Genlis,  229 

Arnault 249 

Napol6on 254 

Mad.  de  Remusat. .  256 
Mad.  d'Abrantes..  26b 

"         Las  Cases 256 

"         Miot  de  Melito  ....  257 

"          Vidocq 257 

"         Madame  Michelet.  278 

"          Dumas  294 

Napoleon  253 

Napoleon  (Louis) 273 

Necker 21 1 

Nerval  (de) 296 

Nicole 96 

Nisard 328 

Nodier 302 

Ogier  le  Danois 38 

Ohnet 322 

Orleans  (Charles  of) 55 


PAGE 

Palisot 237 

Palissy 61 

Paris,  le  Comte  de 279 

Pascal 14,93 

Pasquier 75 

Pasquier,  oil  Montaigne 73 

Passerat 77 

Pasteur 33tf 

Patin 325 

Pellisson 140 

Pereflxe 140 

Perrault 14;i 

Perrotin,  the  publisher 38J 

Pey  rat 27<J 

Piancelle  46 

Piron   177 

Pithou 77 

Planche 328 

Plessis-Mornay  (du) 83 

Pousard 297 

Poutmartin  (de) 28,  321,  329 

on  Janin 327 

Pompignan  (de) 176 

Porchat 292 

Pouchet 337 

Pouillet 333 

Poujoulat 336 

Port  Royal 92 

Preaching  Friars 54 

Prevost  (!' Abbe) 194 

Prevost  Paradol 274 

Preston  (Mrs.),  trans,  of  Mireio.  301 

Pressens6 337 

Provencal  Lang,  and  Lit 9 

Quatrefages  (de) 339 

Quesnay 153 

Quinault 135 

Quinet 292 

Rabelais  11,  61 

Racan  (de) 77,  78 

Racine  (Jean).  13, 115,  135 

Racine  (Louis) 151 

Raimbert  of  Paris  39 

Rambouillet  (Madame  de) 79 

Rapin 77 

Raynal  (!' Abbe) 184 

Raynouard 247 

Reboul 288 

Recamier  (Madame  de). . .  .207,  223 

Reclus 340 

Regnard 135 

Regnier 77 

R6musat  (de) 267 

R6musat  (Madame  de) 256 

Remusat 233 

Renan 333 

Reynard  the  Fox 44 

Reybaud  (Madame) 322 

Richard  the  Pilgrim 39 

Richebourg 322 

Richelieu 12,85 

Rochefoucauld  (de  la) 128 

Rochefort 317 

Revoil-Colet  (Madame) 296 

Renaissance 58 

Rodrigues 243 

Rogers,  on  Madame  de  Stag! . .  218 

Roland,  Song  of 32,  38 

Rollin 151 


INDEX. 


353 


PAGE 

Ronsard 63,  64 

Rosset 180 

Kotron 66 

Koucher 180 

Round  Table  Cycle 32 

RonquetteiF.  D.) 343 

Rouquette  (A.) 343 

Rousseau  (J.  B.) 140 

Rousseau  ij.  J.) 16,  172-176 

Hoyer-Collard 263 

Rues  (Francois  de) 49 

Rulhiere   188 

Rutebeuf 46 

Ryer  <du) 90 

Sacy  (de) 233 

"        on  The  Arabian  Nights' 

Entertainments....  144 

Paint-Amant 99 

Sainte-Beuve 28,  324 

on  Constant 222 

"  Montalembert,260 

Saint-Evremond 147 

Saint  Gelais  ide) 63 

Saintiiie 29,  302 

Saint-Lambert 179 

Saint-Pierre  (Bernardin  de) —  153 

Saint  Simon  (Due  de) 137,  149 

"  "       on  Fene- 

lon....  137 
Saint-Simon  (Comte  de). .  ..241-244 

Saisset 332 

Salon  of  the  Hotel  Rambouillet,  80 

Mad.  da  Maine 147 

de  Lambert 147 

du  Deffand 186 

Geoffrin     187 

d'Houdetot 187 

Simrd 187 

deRf'camier,  208-210 

de  Stael 222 

deGirardin 295 

Salvandy 273 

Sand '.   ...24,307-309 

Sa  ndeau 27,  296 

Sarrey.  <>n  the  French  stage.. .    22 

Sar-inii   299 

sarrnzin 82 

Sa;yre  Menipp£e 76 

Siimin 180 

SiinsMire  (del   339 

S:i  i] vijriiy  (de) 101 

Soarrori   100 

Srh"ll '.. 322 

Scribe 294 

8cuderi  (George) 88 

Scnderl  (Mile,  de) 82,96,98 

Sc.iaine 190 

Sf.gala*  'Madame  Anals) 297 

St'^ur  i  dei  275 

Segur  (de)  Madame 29,  318 

S.'-j.'iir 343 

Seville  i  Madame  de)...9»,  130-132 

Sieyes 193,203 

Simon 332 

Sismondi  (de) 250 


PAGE 

Sorel 101 

Souli6 304 

Soumet 287 

Souvestre  310 

Spain  (St.  Hilaire's  History  of  i.  279 

Staal  (Madame  de) 147 

Stael  HolsteiinMad.de),  20,  211-220 

Stahl 333 

Stendhal  (de) .309 

Suard  (Madame; 1ST 

Sue 25,306,307 

Taine 28,330 

Tallemant  desReaux...  f-0 

Talleyrand 257 

on  Mad.  de  Stael..  219 

Tastu  Oladamei 288 

Terrail  (Du)  322 

Thackeray,  on  Dumas 293 

"  Janin 326 

Theophile  Viaud ..  78 

Theuriet 321 

Thierry 29,276.277 

Thiers 29,272 

Thomas 190 

Tillemont 140 

Tissot 265,279 

Tocqueville  (de) 268 

Toepffer 303 

Tracy  (de) 239 

Tressan  (de) 189 

Troubadours  and  TrouTeres..9,  52 

Turold 39 

Urfe(d') 77 

Vacherot...  336 

Varillas 140 

Vaudeville,  Origin  of 53 

Vauquelin  de  la  Fresnaye 68 

Vauvenargues 188 

Velpeau 337 

Vericour(de) 331 

"  "  on  Chateaubriand  'M6 

"  "  Cuvier 231 

Vertot 140 

Verne  (Jules) 27,  319 

Veiiillot  314 

Viaud 78 

Vidocq 257 

Viennet 253 

Vignaud 345 

Vigny  (del 28,  288 

Villehardoum 41 

Viilemain 3-J3 

Villemain,  on  Beaumarchais. .  JH 

"  Froissart 51 

Villeneuve  (Madame) 143 

Villon 55 

Vincent 322 

Vinet 325 

Viollet-le-Duc 341 

Vitet 291 

Voiture 82 

Volney 240 

Voltaire 15,  156-171 

AValkenaer 332 

Zola 30,  27,319,320 


